


Mother Nature

by jay_girl88



Series: Mother Material [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Tony Stark, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Clint Barton & Tony Stark Friendship, Don't copy to another site, Earthquakes, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Kid Fic, Protective Avengers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, Superfamily, Team as Family, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 03:46:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 84,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18422172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jay_girl88/pseuds/jay_girl88
Summary: "In the end, all it took to bring Captain Steven Grant Rogers to his knees, was a goddamn phone call."~*~*~*~Toni finds out that she has maternal instincts (something nobody bothered telling her, thanks a lot, guys) and that it's really hard to turn them off.Even when she knows that they're going to lead her into the kinds of things that make the Avengers yell at her, make Peter scared, and make Steve give her the Puppy Eyes Of Doom.And it wasn't even her fault this time. Tough break.





	1. The Phone Call

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, wow!! I was completely floored by the response I got to The Mommy Quandary, but so thrilled to hear that there were people who enjoyed it and wanted to see more! Honestly, I'd sort of convinced myself about 36 seconds after posting it, that it was completely stupid and I should probably take it down. But I didn't, and I'm so glad now that I didn't, because WOW! Thank you all so much, really! I'm humbled and beaming at the response :D 
> 
> Okay, that's my gushing done! Hope you guys enjoy the next installment in this series, and a special shout out to FandomOverLord, who somehow saw into the future and saw me incorporating Bucky into this 'verse! :D
> 
> **Note: This can be read as a standalone, but some things will be clearer if you read the first one in this 'verse :)**

In the end, it wasn’t megalomaniac scientists, or terrorist organizations, or Norse Gods hell-bent on world domination. It wasn’t Doom bots, or mutated creatures, or destructive aliens. It wasn’t even something out of this world.

Pure, simple annihilation. 

In the end, all it took to bring Captain Steven Grant Rogers to his knees, was a goddamn phone call. 

 

### 

 

It was amazing just how much trouble six-year-olds could find when they were motivated. 

Knowing that, and wanting to prevent the trouble if possible, Steve kept a watchful gaze on the little boy playing in front of him, dividing his attention neatly (if not entirely equally) between a happily entertained Peter and his own novel. It was a thriller that he’d only just started, but the author had managed to reel him in from the very first few sentences, which he almost regretted since the majority of his attention was dedicated to his son. 

Just the thought made a smile curve his lips. This wasn’t a life he could have ever predicted for himself, but at the same time, it was a life that he was constantly grateful for having. He had a beautiful, amazing girlfriend – and every day that he was with the infamous Toni Stark, he found himself falling deeper and deeper in love with the woman behind the name – and they had somehow ended up leading a group of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and that had been enough for him. But Fate had intervened, as she was wont to do, and Toni had one day saved a little boy from an attack that had already wiped out the rest of his family; the very moment that Steve had seen her curled protectively around the three-year-old, he’d known that their lives were about to change again, and true to form, barely a month had passed before he and Toni were adopting Peter to cap off their little family. It wasn’t conventional by any stretch of the imagination, but this family was his, and Steve loved every moment of the time he spent with them. 

“Oh man, you’ve got that stupid, sappy look on your face,” a teasing voice drifted over the air, making Steve grin despite the words. Bucky was pulling an exaggerated face of disdain, but his eyes were warm and happy. “Thinking about your girl genius again?”

Steve wasn’t sure he would ever fully understand the friendship that had blossomed between his lover and his best friend. Only six months ago, Bucky had been on the run, avoiding everything and everyone as far as possible for fear of losing control over his HYDRA programming. It had been Toni who had eventually tracked him down, once Steve had swallowed his pride and asked his resourceful girlfriend for help, and Steve had spent the better part of two weeks convincing his childhood best friend to come back to the tower with him. 

By all accounts, there should have been at least a little bit of wariness between Bucky and Toni, especially since the Winter Soldier programming had been so difficult for the former to throw off. More than that, after the fall of SHIELD, Toni had discovered that the Winter Soldier was responsible for her parents’ deaths. There was no reason for them to get along, and Steve had braced himself for a tug-of-war between his past with his best friend, and his present and future with the love of his life. Against all odds, however, Toni (who had trust issues stacked higher than the Avengers tower) had taken one look at a skittish and apprehensive Bucky, and welcomed him with open arms and easy acceptance. Much later, she had admitted to Steve that, looking at Bucky, it had become obvious to her that there was nothing she could do or say that would punish him more than he was punishing himself, even though it was something he hadn’t even had control over, and she’d wanted to make it easier instead of harder for him. It was, in retrospect, not unlike how Toni had befriended Bruce, by not judging the scientist based on a part of himself that he couldn’t control, but the real surprise had been how Bucky had responded. 

Not only had the man, reticent around everyone except Steve, allowed Toni to work on his arm and then eventually replace the bulky, HYDRA-made model, but he also willingly ventured into the genius’ workshop on an almost daily basis simply for conversation. The two could talk for hours about cars or mechanics, and according to Bucky, Toni was the best person among them to ask for help transitioning to all the new technology and era developments. It had been difficult not to be wary at first, and indeed, he’d had several moments where he’d wanted nothing more than to duke it out with his best friend, history notwithstanding, but in time, Steve had managed to look past his jealousy. He’d seen Bucky smiling and laughing and being more himself than he had been in decades. He’d seen Toni come to grips with the past and let it go, in favour of a future. He’d seen two of his favourite people become thick as thieves, and with the help of Nat, realized that they had done it because of him. _For_ him. And knowing that he meant that much to them went a long way towards tempering his possessiveness. 

And when that didn’t work, Toni was always all too happy to let him mark her up with his teeth and tongue and make it very clear whose best gal she was. 

Returning his attention to his grinning friend, Steve put his book down, marking the page with his thumb. “If I’m smiling, then it’s almost always because I’m thinking about Toni,” he admitted brazenly, smirking slightly at the put-upon gagging that his best friend was doing. 

“Your kid is right there,” Bucky pointed out, throwing himself carelessly into the armchair near where Steve was lounging. “Should you really be thinking about your dame when you’re on babysittin’ duty, punk?”

Steve half-heartedly kicked the edge of the armchair, not wanting to expend the energy to actually reach his smug friend. “I can pay attention to Peter and think about Toni at the same time, jerk,” he replied automatically, arranging his features into an expression of playful condescension he’d seen Toni pull too many times to count. “S’called multi-tasking.”

“I’ve heard ‘bout couples mimicking each other’s behaviors, but that’s just eerie,” Bucky commented with a grin. “It’s like she’s here, ‘cept she’s a fella.” Steve rolled his eyes with an amused smile, but before he could quip back a retort about how he’d love Toni as a man just the same, Bucky continued, “Where is she, anyway? I haven’t seen her in a week.”

He tried valiantly, but Steve didn’t think he managed to keep the pout off his face. “Some R&D emergency in the Argentinian branch of SI that apparently needed her presence. She’s only coming back in a couple days,” he lamented on a sigh. After a beat of consideration, the super soldier added, “She’s mine alone for at least 36 hours straight when she gets back, so whatever you’re thinking about, have it wait an extra day and a half.” The warning wasn’t altogether a joke; Steve fully intended on monopolizing his girlfriend before everyone else when she came back; but since they had Peter to worry about, he supposed he had to shorten that time frame significantly. But only for their son. 

“Greedy,” Bucky commented laughingly, but he knew better than to argue it. He flicked his head towards Peter. “Kid doing okay without her here?”

Steve knew that the words weren’t meant as any slight against him, and he didn’t take it as such either; Peter had latched onto Toni since she had saved him, and for the longest time, she had been the only one he’d trusted. At the beginning, it had been an interesting bond to watch unfold, mostly because the child had brought out the mother in Toni long before she could admit that he had. It’d taken Fate and a little bit of Howard Stark (though Steve was loathe to credit anything to that abusive sonofabitch that he still wished he could get his fists on) to make Toni realize that Peter was her son just as much as she was now his mother, for all intents and purposes. That had been close to two years ago and if anything, the time had only strengthened the relationship between mother and son. 

It was likely that the pair would always be closer than Peter would be with him, although that wasn’t at all to say that he wasn’t close with his son. It was just a matter of how early the trust with Toni had been built. He wasn’t envious of it; only adoring. 

Casting a fond gaze at the playing child, he nodded, dragging his focus back to Bucky’s question. “We were worried, but he’s been alright,” Steve confirmed with no small measure of relief. This had been the first time in the two and a half years they’d had him, that Toni absolutely couldn’t get out of leaving, and also couldn’t make the arrangements to take them with. She’d had to leave at an hour’s notice in the middle of the night and there just hadn’t been time, but Peter had adjusted like a champ. “He misses her, of course,” the super soldier added, with the air of one stating the obvious. “Gets a little sad after talking to her, and he’s been bunking in our room instead of his own. But for the most part, he’s been okay.” Honestly, it had been better than they’d been expecting. 

And maybe that had been too much to ask for, because in the next moment, Steve’s phone rang, and his entire world fell apart around him. 

**_“Steve!”_** the woman’s voice came over the line before he could even greet her, and Pepper Potts, the notoriously unflappable woman, sounded completely _wrecked_. She sounded hysterical, panic of the worst sort, and the Captain’s heart froze in his chest, because anything that had Pepper sounding like that, saying his name like a goddamn prayer, couldn’t have been good. 

He was on his feet in an instant, only mindful enough to make sure Peter was still preoccupied with his toys while Steve took jerky steps away from his son. “Pepper?” he croaked out, his voice thin even to his own ears. “What… what’s going on, what’s wrong? Where’s Toni?”

**“Steve, I’m _sorry,_ I’m so, so, sorry, I just… I _didn’t know she_ … but _why_ would… I _couldn’t_ , Steve, I _tried_ …”**

His throat was being clogged by his thundering heart, and Steve had to blink twice to clear suddenly tunneled vision. “Pepper, _what happened_?! Where the fuck is she?”

Perhaps it was the cuss word that he never used in front of Peter, or maybe it was his own enhanced hearing, but Bucky was suddenly all business, face grim and jaw set as he closed the gap between them. He stayed angled, so they could have a clear line of sight towards a blissfully oblivious Peter, but he was close enough that he could still wrap a steadying hand around Steve’s bicep. 

**“She’s…”** Pepper’s voice faltered, before picking up into a breathless little wail. **“She’s _such an idiot!_ She… there was… earthquake, an earthquake, and the kid… she tried to… she’s trapped underneath the building, Steve!”**

Through the roaring in his ears, Steve no more heard Pepper’s next words, than he did hear the crack of his knees against the floor as his legs gave out from underneath him. 

The next few moments happened in a blur of activity. Suddenly, the door was opening, and the rest of the Avengers were flooding in wearing identically grim expressions. Bucky snatched the phone from him, talking to Pepper in harsh, low barks, Clint intercepted Peter, who was rushing towards Steve, and Natasha and Bruce made a beeline for him. 

“Breathe, Steve!” Nat snapped, dropping to one knee next to him, and Steve abruptly realized that he was hyperventilating. His chest was tight and achy and sore, and it felt like he was going to pass out, and oh _God,_ he was having another asthma attack…

Except that he didn’t have asthma anymore. Hadn’t had it for over seven decades. 

_Panic attack, honey. You’re having a panic attack_ , a voice in his head sympathetically murmured, sounding vaguely like the love of his life. Like Toni. 

Toni, who was _underneath a fucking building._

She needed him. 

The clarity came with the suddenness of a rubber band snapping into place. Shoving off the hand (green-tinted, didn’t escape his notice) that was reaching out to steady him, Steve brushed past Bruce and Nat to grab his phone back from Bucky. 

After a choking swallow, he managed some semblance of words. “Pepper, is she… what did… do you know?” His voice was hoarse, as though he’d spent an entire night screaming his throat raw, which didn’t feel like an inaccurate prediction for the future if the unthinkable would come to pass. 

**“She’s alive,”** was the first thing the redhead said, sounding tearful and scared but a lot more composed. Something, Steve distantly recognized, he probably had Bucky to thank for. **“Before JARVIS went offline, she was trying to tell me something. She mentioned that the kid was safe with her, and something about an air bubble? Then…”**

Steve felt his stomach swoop unpleasantly at the hesitation from Pepper, but he staggered a little further away from a now-silent, frightened Peter and forced himself to ask. “Then, what?”

 **“She said she was going to try to get them out,”** Pepper answered with obvious reluctance, her voice thick and miserable. **“She said she wasn’t sure if it would work, but to tell you and Peter that she was sorry. That she loved you.”**

The phone broke apart in Steve’s hand. 

 

###

 

As far as Mondays went, this one completely fucking sucked. 

Toni’s ears were still ringing slightly, something which she knew was attributed to the nasty knock to the skull she’d taken going down, her whole body ached with a smorgasbord of injuries and JARVIS, her ever faithful companion, had been forced offline by the damage to the suit that she could probably fix, but needed to wait until she wasn’t periodically seeing two of everything. 

And to top it all off, she had a goddamn kid with her. 

“You still with me, sweetheart?” she asked the little boy gently, rubbing his back in soothing circles the same way she did with her own charge when he had a nightmare or got sick. Like Peter, the little boy scooted impossibly closer, as if he could hide from everything if he just snuggled close enough, and nodded mutely. 

The action was so reminiscent of her son that a lump formed in her throat. Toni fought back surprisingly insistent tears that sprung up at the thought of her family, and the phone call she’d had with them just a few hours ago…

 

_“Mommy!”_

_The cheer, in lieu of a greeting, instantly made Toni’s day ten times brighter as she laughed, her own delight mirrored by her son’s. “Hey, sweet pea! Did you commandeer your daddy’s phone again?”_

_“Daddy, what’s a com’deer?” She heard Peter asking Steve, making her grin in amusement. Briefly, the billionaire wondered whether Steve had given Pete the phone, knowing she’d get a kick out of his excitement, or whether the six-year-old had simply been quicker to the proverbial draw than the super soldier. She was betting on the former, although she would never discredit the potential ability of a six year old’s energy to exceed that of a super soldier’s._

_After a few moments, in which she could only assume the love of her life was trying to patiently explain commandeering to their son, Peter finally came back on to the phone. “Yeah, I com’deered it! I wanted to talk to you! Uncle Clint taught me how to climb to the shelf with the cookies!”_

_Before she could reply, though..._

_“He did **what**?!” Toni heard Steve’s strangled voice in the background, understandably so since the shelf in question was a stretch for even Thor to reach. Unless someone had moved it, that was an awfully high distance for the little boy to be climbing. _

_“Uh-oh,” Peter mumbled softly, and Toni wasn’t sure whether it was directed at her or Steve. “I forgot that was supposed to be a secret.”_

_Biting her lip to stifle the laughter that desperately wanted to escape, it took Toni three false starts before she could speak. “I think you should hang out with Uncle Bruce today, honey,” she suggested lightly, knowing that their resident birdbrain was going to be busy running for his life for the duration of the day._

_“That’s prob’ly for the best,” Peter replied agreeably, and this time, she did laugh, hearing the words out of his mouth that she knew had been parroted off either her or Steve. “Mommy, when are you coming home?”_

_The words, along with the hint of longing they held, made her laughter stop abruptly, sticking in her throat. Her heart ached with a homesickness she’d never felt before the Avengers, multiplied now by the fact that she had Peter and Steve waiting on her. She knew that she’d been away longer than expected – mostly because it was amazing how many ways the idiots in her R &D crew could screw up, it was starting to look like a generational thing, honestly – and she was more than ready to be back home. _

_Suffusing her voice with gentleness and love, she gave her standard reply. “Soon, baby. When all of the toys are fixed, I’ll be on a plane the very first minute that I can.”_

_Some part of her still blanched at calling any of the developmental projects SI had going on, toys, but during one of the media slams against SI, a reporter had thrown some vitriol at her about how she could never wash all the blood off her hands from the things she’d created. Unfortunately Steve, in his righteous anger on her behalf while watching it on the news, hadn’t realized that Peter had heard the whole thing too, until he’d thrown his juice box at the TV._

_When she’d come home that day, it had been to Peter clutching her around the legs and sniffling, telling her that it wasn’t her fault if the toys broke. It took a bit of time and Steve’s amused input before she’d realized just what conjectures the little boy’s mind had made, and when she did, it had made her feel even better than the mini engineering binge she’d gone on. Toni had no doubt that the classification could probably be traced back to someone in the tower who’d commented on Toni and her toys, but Peter had seemed so pleased with himself for ‘knowing’ that she built toys, and making her feel better, that she’d never had the heart to correct him._

_“I miss you,” he told her softly, and damn if that little voice didn’t make her want to scrap the whole Argentinian division just so that she wouldn’t have to be so far away without her family again._

_“I miss you more,” she said instead, swallowing against the lump in her throat._

_Before she could do something ridiculous like cry, Peter giggled slightly. “Okay, Daddy wants his phone now. Love you, Mommy, bye!”_

_“Love you, too, sweet pea.” Toni smiled as she pictured Steve playfully tickling Peter to get his phone back. Her guess was proven spot on as a shriek of laughter came over the line, accompanied by the delighted pleas of a child who didn’t really want the fun to stop. A now-familiar burst of longing came over her and Toni consoled herself with the knowledge that she would be home by Wednesday, if her luck stood._

_Peter’s laughter faded into the background, replaced by a slightly breathless, deep voice that turned her thoughts on a dime to something little more R rated. “Morning, beautiful.”_

_“What I wouldn’t give to be hearing that from the spot next to me, in bed,” she replied by way of greeting, voice equally teasing and longing._

_Steve laughed a little, then in a move she knew was designed to make her feel better, he husked lowly, “You and I both know that if I was in bed next to ya, talkin’ wouldn’t be happenin’, darlin’.”_

_His rough voice in conjunction with that Brooklyn drawl that she loved so much kept her distracted for the rest of the conversation, suffice to say._

 

She wished for nothing more than Steve right now, but her lover was all the way in New York. _Safe_ , she reminded herself sternly. _He and Peter are safe, you don’t really want them here._

Which was true. But she wouldn’t say no to Steve’s voice in her ear just then. 

_Too fucking bad, Stark,_ she told herself grimly, gritting her teeth and blinking hard, determined to finagle her mind into some semblance of a working order. _Till you get JARVIS back up and running, you’re on your own._

Old defenses settled over her skin like a pair of comfy sweats. In a way, it was comforting; a reminder that she’d been alone in situations like this before and could be, again, and still survive against all expectation. That was what she did. She beat the odds. It was built into her programming the same way that messing up was apparently coded into DUM-E. 

The thought steadied her frazzled nerves and she turned her attention back to the kid clinging to her. A cursory inspection as soon as the dust had settled, had revealed that he had sustained no real injuries aside from some possible bruising. Which was good, awesome even, because she had no Goddamn clue how she would have dealt with a scared kid who was also hurting. 

“What’s your name, honey?” she asked softly in fluent Spanish, trying to distract him while her mind barreled its way through calculations and probabilities and backup plans to backup plans. 

He answered her without detaching himself from the death grip he had her in, and it was so muffled that she had to ask him to repeat it. “Maico.”

“Maico, huh?” she repeated, scanning through the recesses of her expansive knowledge and memory. “That means ‘one with strength’, right?” she asked, forcing a smile over her features when he peeked up at her. 

He nodded mutely, but granted her a tiny smile in response so Toni counted it as a win. 

Not giving him a chance to get back in his head, she engaged him once more. “Well, I think we could use some of that. I’m Toni, by the way. I think my name means ‘one who talks a lot’.” Her attempt at a joke elicited a wider smile and even got the kid to loosen his grip on her a little. Small successes. “How old are you, Maico?” 

“Eight,” he answered softly, making her feel a little sick as he reminded her even more starkly of Peter. Who, she hoped, would never find himself in a situation like this. 

With great difficulty, she took her thoughts away from the little boy that she’d left at home and focused on the one she was cradling right now. The one who had a family to get back to. A mother to get back to, a mother that was being forced to pray for someone else to bring her child back to her when she was helpless on the sidelines.

Toni wouldn’t disappoint. 

“Eight?” The genius whistled low, a sound of amazement that was pretty much universal. “Wow, you’re practically a grownup then, aren’t you?” she asked, injecting admiration in her tone that she knew Peter got a kick out of when she directed it at him. 

Maico giggled, a childish sound that warmed Toni’s heart a little as he relaxed and leaned back as much as their small space allowed. “Daddy says I am, but my mama says I’m still her baby boy.”

“That so?” the billionaire asked, fighting another brief battle trying not to think of Peter. Her distraction cost her the train of thought she’d had going, and it took an extra second for her to remember the Spanish of what she was trying to say. “I suppose that’s a mother thing, then,” she commented lightly, nimbly popping open the panel on the helmet that had most of the circuitry connected to JARVIS’ mainboard. 

Sufficiently distracted, Maico tilted his head to the side, considering her. “Are you someone’s mama?”

“Sure am,” Toni answered, clearing her throat in an effort to dispel the lump that kept tangling it. It was obviously a lost cause, trying not to think of her mischievous little boy, but then, maybe it was best she didn’t. Thoughts of him, of Steve and home, would make sure that she kept fighting. “My son’s name is Peter.”

The little boy looked like he committing the name to memory, intelligent eyes thoughtful as he gazed upon her. “Mama says she loves me all the way down to her toes. Do you love your son like that?”

“Just like that,” she affirmed softly, quick fingers already stripping wires and trying to salvage what she could from the damage that had been sustained to the suit.

Maico nodded solemnly, as if he’d expected that answer, and the adorable sight made it a little easier to handle her own heartache. “Would you be angry with your son if he got stuck because he wasn’t supposed to play in the old warehouse?”

The question made her stop her work briefly, to bring Maico into a gentle hug and press a comforting little kiss to the top of his head. 

“I think I would just be very happy that he didn’t get hurt, honey,” she told him, sensing the importance of remaining within the parameters of the child’s question rather than telling him outright that she didn’t think his mother would care about anything else, other than the fact that her baby was alive and safe. 

He looked relieved at the answer, gifting her with another sweet smile as she got back to work on the helmet. “Miss Toni?”

“Mm?”

“You sound like you’re a really nice mama,” he told her shyly, burrowing close for another hug while she was momentarily struck into inaction. Smiling softly, she wrapped her arms around him and cuddled him close, allowing them both a single moment where they could pretend they were at home, hugging their own families. 

It only increased her own determination to make that happen. 

###


	2. JARVIS Is In The House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! A quick thanks again for the warm reception, both to this fic and to the first in the series! :D I'm thoroughly enjoying writing this, so I really hope y'all enjoy reading it!
> 
> A quick reminder: Italics are flashbacks, bold is conversation over comms or phone, and this: (###) denotes a change in perspective <3
> 
> Also, shout out to Lily, the reader who wanted to see Cap apologize in Mommy Quandary. Your wish, my dear... :D

Steve clenched and unclenched his jaw repeatedly as he stared into nothingness. His posture was ramrod straight and he was unmoving as a statue – in fact, at some point, he was pretty sure that he’d slipped into a parade rest – but his mind? His mind, on the other hand, was positively _screaming._

Happy memories were elusive, dancing frustratingly out of reach in the back of his mind, while the bad ones played out ad nauseam in front of his eyes. Every mistake he’d ever made, big or small, every tear that Toni had ever shed, all of those instances replayed themselves to the soundtrack of his girlfriend screaming out for him to help her; something he hadn’t yet heard outside his nightmares, but something his imagination was all too helpful in fabricating. 

The one that stuck in his head the most; the one that he still wasn’t entirely sure he’d forgiven himself for; was of course the time that Howard Stark had crash-landed into their century. Steve still remembered with no small amount of self-recrimination, how he’d greeted the man like the long-lost friend he’d thought him to be. Invited him into their home. Defended him against the one person in the world whose side he should never have had to even think about taking. Steve wasn’t one to cuss excessively, if only because of Peter, but he’d fucked everything up so badly in those two days that he was still surprised Toni had forgiven him. 

_But she did,_ he reminded himself faintly, battling numbness. 

Steve had apologized and Toni had forgiven him; not even in that order. The genius had forgiven him even before he had asked her to, because she was just special like that, but nevertheless, he had apologized. He’d fixed his mistake. He’d healed the wound he’d inadvertently inflicted. He was sure of it…

 

_“You’re thinking real loud there, babe.”_

_Steve blinked, unaware that the woman all wrapped up in his arms was even awake until he glanced at her face to find sleep-soft eyes fixed on him. The warm orbs looked almost amber hued in the light of the arc reactor and though she was obviously on the brink of unconsciousness, Steve watched as Toni dragged herself into semi-wakefulness at his lack of response._

_“S’wrong, Stevie?” she asked gently, a nickname Toni only really used when she was really worried about him. She turned in his arms and brought her hands up to frame his face. “Are you…”_

_“I haven’t apologized yet.”_

_The words tumbled from his lips without conscious thought, Steve not even realizing how important that was to him until it was out there, up in the air between them. It was Toni’s turn to look at him owlishly, apparently nonplussed with the direction their conversation had taken, but after a scant second and a half, comprehension dawned. Her entire expression turned soft in a way that Steve loved; loved, because it was a part of Toni that she never let anyone else see, just him, in these moments between them that they shared only with each other in the relative cloak of night._

_Smoothing her thumb along his jaw, she started to speak. “That’s not…”_

_“It is,” Steve interrupted her gently, catching her hand with his and bringing it to his lips. She smiled faintly as he brushed a kiss against her knuckles – something he did habitually every time he took her hand – but her eyes were clouded with concern and empathy._

_How could people could possibly think that this woman was heartless? Was cold? They truly knew nothing about Antonietta Stark beyond her last name._

_Regaining his train of thought, Steve affirmed what he was trying to say. “It is necessary, Toni, because I was a complete bas—“_

_“Language!”_

_“—jerk, to you,” he changed tack smoothly, a faint smile lifting his lips as Toni grinned with the playful teasing. “I didn’t stop to ask what had happened; although even then I should have defended you first, without question; and worse, I picked on things that I knew weren’t even remotely true, just to try for the upper hand.” His blue eyes turned equally fervent and pleading. “I’m sorry baby. I’m so sorry.”_

_Toni flushed a light pink, an adorable reaction that she always had when Steve called her baby. It never failed to make him smile. “It’s okay,” she assured him softly, ducking her head and pressing a small kiss to his collarbone._

_“No, there’s nothing okay about it,” he refuted gently, pausing only long enough to catch her lips in a quick kiss of gratitude. “It was completely unacceptable. But I promise you, doll, it’s never going to happen again. I’m never going to let you down like that again.”_

_She looked like she wanted to argue, but thought better of it. “For what it’s worth, I forgive you, Stevie.”_

_“I love you, doll,” he rumbled softly in response, kissing her before she could reciprocate the words. He plundered her mouth slowly, thoroughly, like he had all the time in the world just to map out every ridge and contour and savor the taste that was purely Toni. The same way she approached everything in her life, Toni met his insistent mouth with a ferocity and single-minded intensity that Steve always thrilled having directed at him._

_Chasing his lips when he pulled back slightly, Toni was distracted enough to move pliantly under his hands as the super soldier pulled her underneath him, hovering over her like he could shield her from the entire world by sheer force of will alone._

_Steve ran a hand slowly down the length of his girlfriend’s body as they kissed again. Cupping the inside of her knee gently, he hitched her leg up and around his waist, swallowing her hitching moan and the ensuing gasp of his name._

_And proceeded to prove to her just how much he loved her. Again and again. And again._

 

So, yes. She had forgiven him and Toni could no longer be hurt by what had happened two years ago. They’d grown since then, as a couple and as a family, and just because his mind was intent on pointing out all the times that he’d been less than what she deserved, didn’t mean that Toni didn’t know how much he loved her. 

She _had_ to know. 

“Stevie.”

Without thinking, Steve stiffened as Bucky approached him. His best friend had been the first to firmly declare his intention to accompany Steve to Argentina; his exact words, Steve vaguely recalled, were _‘I’m going. End of the fucking story.’;_ and though the super soldier appreciated the sentiment, it had still been a difficult call to make. No matter that his knee-jerk, emotional response was to take all their heavyweights with him, Steve had been forced to face the reality that he couldn’t simply leave New York completely undefended in the absence of most of the Avengers. 

Well. He could, but Toni would probably have been pissed if he did. Fury, too, probably, but Steve didn’t care one way or the other about that. 

Since he was fairly certain that he wouldn’t be convincing Bucky to stay behind, Steve had made the difficult decision of leaving Thor behind, the God having shown up within ten minutes of the news breaking. Thor himself had done what he’d always done; nodded understandingly and vowed to hold the fort along with Nat and Clint; and that had left Bucky and Bruce to accompany him. Bruce was a no-brainer, what with the Hulk’s strength combined with his protectiveness over Toni, not to mention the doctor himself. Whatever happened, Steve wanted Bruce in on checking Toni over, since the genius only really trusted her science bro by way of medical. 

“At ease, soldier,” Bucky murmured, eyes gentle as he took in the stiff stance Steve had taken. “You doin’ okay?” He winced and shook his head before Steve could so much as raise an eyebrow, pinching the bridge of his nose impatiently. “Stupid question, I know. M’sorry.”

Forcing himself to relax a little, because there was no point in lashing out when he could be thinking of a strategy to get Toni out safely, Steve forced himself to take a steadying breath. “S’okay,” he muttered, absently knuckling his chest. In some ways, he felt like he used to as a kid; steps away from having an asthma attack because he just couldn’t take a fucking breath. Not while he knew that the love of his life was possibly hurting, probably scared. “I just… I gotta focus on her right now. Gettin’ her outta there safely.”

“We will,” Bucky replied earnestly, in a way that made the blond wonder whether his best friend knew how much he sounded like he needed convincing as much as Steve himself. “I mean, we did promise.”

He managed a faint smile at the reminder of the promise he’d made Peter before leaving. After making the decision about who to take with him on a rescue mission for the love of his life, leaving Peter was the next hardest part. The child had clung to him, even without knowing what was going on. Eventually, it had taken some semblance of an explanation for Peter to let him leave, and even though the only thing that Steve had said was that he needed to go get Mommy back, the little boy seemed to understand that something had gone wrong. Not a difficult conclusion to come to, since he’d basically seen Steve melt down at the phone call, but still, the super soldier wished he could have spared Peter ever knowing. 

That uneasiness in his son’s eyes when Peter had demanded a promise from him to bring his mommy back safely, was something that Steve fervently wished never to see again. 

Bucky shifted in place and Steve watched as he pulled out his Starkphone, swiping a few buttons.

**“Yeah?”**

Steve didn’t know whether to be grateful for, or annoyed by his best friend’s interference when he heard Nat’s voice over speakerphone, but he was forced to admit that speaking to Peter was probably the only thing that would keep his head away from the dark thoughts at this point. 

There were only a few words exchanged by Bucky and Natasha, all of which Steve blocked out as not being remotely important right then, and after a brief pause, Peter came on the line. 

**“Daddy?”**

Like it always did, Steve’s heart warmed at the address, thawing away some of the ice that seemed to be encroaching on it since hearing about Toni. “Hey, buddy,” he greeted gently, his entire tone and demeanour changing from what it had been while talking to his best friend. “You looking after Uncle Clint for us?”

 **“Yeah, I am,”** the little boy answered easily, if a little subdued. Then, seemingly as an afterthought, he added, **“Mommy says we gotta, because we look after family. And ‘cuz birdbrains are people too.”**

Steve shook his head slightly, a sound emerging from his mouth that was half a laugh and half a choked back sob. “Too right,” he managed after a few seconds, wondering if Toni knew half of how much Peter picked up from her every day. Half of how important she was in his life, in their life, in their family. “You just keep on doin’ that till we get back, okay, bud?”

 **“’Kay, Daddy.”** A pause, and then, **“Didja get Mommy yet?”**

This time, Steve had to swallow hard a few times before he could answer. “Not yet, Pete, but soon. As soon as I can. Until we get back, you listen to Aunt Nat and Uncle Thor, alright? Be good for them.”

 **“I will,”** Peter replied solemnly, an oath of a child if Steve had ever heard one. **“I love you, Daddy.”**

“Love you, buddy.” Steve waited until Bucky had disconnected the call before he dropped his head into his hands, giving himself a brief moment to get composed. All the ex-HYDRA assassin did was grip his shoulder in silent support for a few seconds before leaving, presumably to get back to piloting the jet. Autopilot was something both super soldiers were still a little leery about. 

Without thinking, Steve fingered the good luck charm he carried with him on every single mission; it was a little charm, about the size of a penny; a novelty thing that was designed to look like the arc reactor in Toni’s chest. He’d seen it one day when Nat had been showing him around the city and bought it for Toni as an impulsive gag gift, only when it had come time to give it to her, he just… hadn’t. Even then, before they’d gotten together, Steve had admired the little gadget that powered her suit. The artist in him had appreciated its beauty while his inherent curiosity craved to know more about it, but it was neither of those things that had ultimately influenced the decision to hold onto it instead.

Instead, it had been the feelings that had begun to invade his life for the genius he’d only known as a friend. At the time, he’d been convinced that she would never give him the time of day, and by holding on to the little novelty button, he’d have a small part of her, at least. After they’d gotten together, Toni had found it among his things, and even when she’d shaken her head and called him a sap, those brown eyes had sparkled when his response was simply to tuck it back into the pocket of his uniform. By then, it was his, and he’d grown used to carrying around a piece of his whole world with him. 

And as much as Toni had called him a sap, it hadn’t stopped her from getting a button designed to look like his shield, and stashing it in one of the armor’s hidden hollow panels. 

Idly playing with the charm calmed Steve; forced his thoughts away from the scary and unthinkable, and towards strategies and plans. When they got there, he would be able to glean a clearer picture of things, but until then…

**“Hey, Winghead? Is this thing on?”**

Blue eyes widened with shock as Steve snapped back up to his feet, Bucky and Bruce both whirling around to face him as well. All three of them realized what was happening at the same time. 

_Toni._

 

###

 

“…and that, little one, is how I managed to make people think that losing my eyebrows when I blew up an experiment accidentally, was actually a fashion statement. I think some people still do it,” Toni added thoughtfully, arranging her features to make it look like she was deeply pondering the possibility, when in reality, she was still running calculations in her head. 

About JARVIS, but also about the rapidly depleting oxygen in the air bubble they’d managed to get caught in. 

Maico giggled, blissfully unaware of the danger that would soon become a lot more noticeable. Toni estimated that they’d been down there going on three hours, at least, and she could already feel her lungs start to smart a little. Thanks to the distraction her charge was inadvertently giving her, the genius was able to keep the stirrings of a panic attack at bay (after the cave and Afghanistan, small spaces were really not her favourite thing in the world) but even through the talking she was doing in an attempt to keep the child’s mind off their predicament, Toni knew that they were approaching dangerous territory. They didn’t have an oxygen supply because they were totally surrounded by rubble upon rubble, and the space was simply too small for two people. 

Her suit had a built-in oxygen supply and air filtration system, so in theory, she was better off than the kid would soon be. In practice, however, Toni was fairly certain that she could persuade Maico into the suit, and that would greatly increase the kid’s chance of survival. 

While greatly decreasing her own. 

Forcefully, the genius shoved those thoughts away, needing to believe that a rescue team would be there soon enough and get them out before things got desperate. The first step to helping was to fix JARVIS, and so Toni concentrated on that while launching into another story about the time that Peter had climbed atop of Mjolnir, only to start flying throughout the Tower when Thor recalled his hammer from four stories up. 

Honestly, if Mjolnir hadn’t been a hammer of the magical variety that had somehow known not to crash through walls while a tiny, living human was attached to it, Toni might have actually been the first person to kill a God. With her bare hands. As it were, Peter had been fine – completely thrilled with himself, in fact – and Thor had gotten off lightly with a three-month ban on poptarts and Steve kicking his ass while sparring hand-to-hand every day for two weeks. 

As she spoke, Toni wasn’t unaware of Maico’s eyelids drooping. It amazed her at first, that he could relax long enough to sleep, but after taking into account his age, combined with fear, an adrenaline crash and the draining, muggy heat, it almost made sense that the child would succumb to fatigue. At any rate, it was a good thing, because asleep, Maico couldn’t panic if the effects of oxygen deprivation started to kick in, and thereby worsen their situation unknowingly. 

They still had a few hours, but Toni knew it was coming. It was like a looming wave just waiting to wipe them out. 

When the little boy did eventually drop off, the genius paused in her work for long enough to slip her watch off and attach it to his wrist instead. The device in the little wristwatch that monitored her heartrate and her O2 levels was still functional, and right now, she needed to know the kid’s vitals better than she needed to know her own. She already knew that she was struggling for every fourth or fifth breath, but with Maico asleep, she’d have to rely on her tech to let her know when the kid needed extra help. 

That would be the point where she’d need to get a little creative. 

Lapsing into silence, Toni dedicated 100 percent of her concentration to the helmet on her lap, and when the HUD flickered a few minutes later, she grinned triumphantly. 

Rerouting some of the suit’s backup power and manipulating the circuitry that connected her interface to her AI in order to make it run on a patchworked wire connection, without those wires frying? Piece of cake. 

“JARVIS, you with me?” she muttered quietly, nimble fingers working quickly but with painstaking care to secure the connection and stabilize it away from the rest of the exposed panel of circuitry. 

A bare few seconds later, pale blue light flickered and then stayed on, illuminating the small space. “Pleasure to be back, Madam,” JARVIS’ crisp British came over the suit’s speakers, and damn if the AI actually sounded relieved. “Shall I begin with some diagnostics?”

“Not so fast, J,” she denied before he could start running scans of her vitals and possible injuries that she’d successfully put to the back of her mind so far. “You’re working on limited power here, so I’m going to need you to save your brilliance. Can you connect to your other servers?”

There was a brief pause, within which Toni tried to estimate how long backup power would last on JARVIS’ basic functions, and she was just about through all the internal calculations before her AI replied in the affirmative. “My servers indicate that the Captain is already aboard a Quinjet, en route to your location, Madam,” JARVIS added. 

Warmth and relief in equal measure almost bowled Toni over. She shouldn’t have been surprised; she wasn’t surprised, not really; because of course Steve was going to come for her when he heard. 

_God,_ she loved that man. 

“Feel like hooking me up, J?” she asked rhetorically, when she was better composed. Steve’s voice was suddenly the only thing in the world that she wanted to hear, wanted it in her ear almost as much as she wanted out of this ridiculous hole in the earth. 

“Certainly, Madam,” JARVIS replied smoothly, and in the next moment, Toni heard the echoes of shuffling. The comm could pick up the barest of sounds, such as the three separate sets of breathing, but nevertheless, she still ventured a careful, “Hey, Winghead? Is this thing on?”

Really, there wasn’t going to be a delicate way to ease Steve into the fact that she was calling him from underneath a fucking building. On the plus side; gotta love StarkTech. 

**“Nice going, Shellhead.”** Rather than Steve, it was Bucky who answered, sounding playful and light on the surface but with an undercurrent of throbbing relief. **“I think you broke our fearless leader.”**

The sound of the nickname had lifted her lips slightly, but it was Barnes’ second comment that elicited the first proper smile on Toni’s face. “I leave him with you for a week, Snowflake, and this is what I come back to?” she asked with her best put-upon tone, able to vividly picture the look of dual affection and exasperation that would come over Bucky’s face that Toni’s own nickname for him. 

**“Toni!”** Steve’s breathless voice cut across whatever response Bucky had been about to make. Her boyfriend sounded like he’d been sucker punched; pained, shocked and disbelieving; but there was an edge of hope, like he couldn’t believe it was her, that sounded so achingly young, Toni’s heart broke a little in the face of it. 

Brown eyes fluttered shut with the force of unexpected emotion overcoming her. “It’s okay, honey,” she tried to soothe softly, sensing that the time had passed for any more lighthearted banter. Steve was genuinely hurting; understandably so, Toni could only imagine what the past few hours had been like for him; and she was a bitch sometimes, but Toni would never trivialize that. “It’s alright. We’ll figure this out, it’s just like any other retrieval op.” 

Except, she knew, it really wasn’t. 

**“Okay. Okay.”** Steve, it seemed, wasn’t any more willing than she was to acknowledge the blatant differences. **“Are you hurt?”**

Toni wondered how much he’d needed to psych himself up to ask that question. “Scrapes and bruises,” she lied easily, determinedly ignoring the bump at the back of her head still sluggishly bleeding and what she was pretty sure was cracked ribs. “Nothing life threatening.” That, at least, she was reasonably certain was the truth. “The kid is fine, too, I managed to get him to sleep.” 

**“Good,”** Steve replied, the relief in his tone making Toni feel guilty for lying. But, she reasoned, having her boyfriend strung and stressed out and worried would not have been very conducive for a retrieval mission as delicate as this one. 

Another voice piped up suddenly. **“Pepper said something about you two being caught in an air bubble. Do you have an oxygen supply?”**

“Brucie Bear!” Toni injected as much enthusiasm as she could manage into the address and was rewarded by two small huffs of laughter. She would bet the tower that her science bro was smiling, at the very least. “Fancy meeting you here. Hey, what about the new project? Isn’t it time-sensitive?”

She could practically hear her friend rolling his eyes. **“It is, but I thought I’d take a break, annoy you at your workplace for a change,”** he deadpanned, and Toni adored Bruce all the more in that moment. 

“How dare you, I’ll have you know that I am a delight, Banner,” she returned mock haughtily, focusing on the banter rather than focusing on the pain that was only getting increasingly persistent the longer she was down there. “I can recall three separate instances where you…”

 **“Oxygen supply, Toni,”** Bruce prompted, sounding reluctantly amused as he cut her off. **“Do you and the kid have one?”**

Though she resented it, the genius knew she couldn’t lie about that. “No,” she admitted after a brief pause, cringing at the dead silence her words were met with. “The suit has its own emergency oxygen supply, but…”

They knew, without her having to say it, that the kid would be getting that. 

“Look, I can’t stay on here for very long,” she pointed out before the quiet even had a chance to become oppressive. “JARVIS is running on backup power; so I’m going to have to spare enough energy for him to try to pinpoint our location, and still connect to the comms when you guys land again. I’ll be in contact soon.” Because the only things that needed to be said now, were between her and Steve, Toni quietly instructed JARVIS to open up a separate, private comm line between them. “Steve?”

It took a second before her boyfriend figured out what she’d done and responded, voice soft. **“Right here, sweetheart.”**

Ridiculously, the words warmed her even as they calmed her, chasing away the last ebbs of panic in a way that only Steve seemed capable of doing. It took Toni several tries before she felt secure enough to speak without the possibility of her voice breaking. 

“Peter okay?” she asked first, partly because she already knew without asking that Steve himself wasn’t. 

**“Mostly,”** the super soldier hedged, and at the very least, Toni knew that he was being truthful. **“He was scared, but we didn’t tell him exactly what was going on. Just that I needed to come get you.”**

Toni nodded slightly in approval before remembering that she was on the comms. “Good… that’s good.” Maico stirred a little and she spared a moment to run a comforting hand through the child’s hair, soothing him with softly spoken Spanish and experienced fingers. “I’m sorry,” she offered quietly, once the little boy had gone still against her once more. “I was clear of the danger zone even after getting the rest of my employees evacuated, but… JARVIS picked up the kid’s heat signature and I just, I couldn’t… I couldn’t just stand there and not do anything. He’s _eight_ , Steve,” she added imploringly, as if it would bolster the strength of her argument. 

Her boyfriend sighed on the other end of the comms and Toni could just imagine the agitated hand that was probably skating through his blond hair, spiking it up in the way it usually was when Steve got worried and kept repeating the motion. 

**“I know, darling,”** he eventually conceded, and Toni let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. **“I also know that those maternal instincts of yours are at the forefront right now, but please just remember… just, do whatever you can for yourself _and_ the kid,” **Steve instructed her firmly, something fierce slipping into his tone. As though he could impress his own determination over her wellbeing onto her. **“I know the most important thing to you right now is saving that kid, but _my_ most important thing is bringing you back to _our_ kid.”**

Toni knew better than to think Steve didn’t care about Maico; no, her boyfriend was simply trusting her to handle her priority while letting her know what was his; but the words lit a whole other kind of heat in her chest. She never tired of hearing Steve refer to Peter as theirs; never tired of reminders of the family that they’d somehow patchworked together. It fueled a resolve in her that she’d always had, making it more potent now, and no matter what it took, Toni was going to see herself out of this along with Maico. She was going to get back to her family and get Maico back to his. 

“Ten-four, Captain,” she replied with a smile that she knew he would hear in her voice. Predictably, a tiny huff of laughter was her reward, and though it was only superficial, Toni still counted it as a win. “I love you.”

“Love you, darlin’.”

Cutting off without saying goodbye – because that word suddenly held much deeper, scarier connotations – the genius began to do what she did best. 

She plotted. 

 

###

 

James Buchanan Barnes could safely say that he had absolutely no clue how he’d gone from being the Winter Soldier; an isolated HYDRA assassin elite who was fear personified; to an Avenger; a do-gooding teammate who had little kids dressing up as him on Halloween. 

That said, he was almost entirely certain that everything attributable to his best friend, was equally attributable to his best friend’s girl.

Steve had been the one who’d convinced him that there was more to himself than a mindless asset; but Toni had been the one who’d convinced him that there was more to _life._ Steve had been the one who’d offered him a new job on the side of good; but Toni had been the one to offer him a new _home._ Steve had been the one who’d helped him integrate into society, but Toni had been the one who’d given him a part in their _family._

Bucky in no way discredited what his best friend had done for him; they were brothers till the end of the line, and Steve had seen him farther than that, too; but the real surprise in everything had been Toni. The woman who had every right in the world to hate him with an unparalleled passion, had instead seen fit to open her home to him. To extend a helping hand. To help soothe the traumas in his mind that he rightly deserved to go through. 

He knew that he didn’t deserve her kindness. 

Even so, while it was being offered, Bucky couldn’t help reaching out for it. Reveling in it and taking comfort from it. For the longest time, he’d waited for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, since it had been a while since he’d been able to trust in something solid. But he could remember with crystal clear clarity the day that the last of his uncertainty and reservations had been broken down by the genius herself…

 

_Bucky entered the workshop cautiously, as he always did, some part of him wondering whether this would be the day Stark finally snapped and remembered the not insignificant detail of his involvement in her parents’ murders, and subsequently threw him out of her workshop and her tower, for that matter._

_His chest was getting a little tight just thinking about it._

_Despite his best efforts not to, he was starting to get comfortable here. Starting, finally, to feel like the man he must have been before the Winter Soldier. If that was Stark’s plan, making him comfortable enough to lower his guard before ripping the floor out from underneath him, then…_

_Well, then, it was a pretty effective plan. And nothing less than what he deserved._

_“Watcha doin’ there, Snowflake?”_

_Stark’s voice, playful yet with a subtle undercurrent of concern, came over Bucky. Blue eyes blinked owlishly as he regarded the genius, whose response was simply to continue manipulating the hologram in front of her. It was both amazing and a little terrifying, how blatantly the woman disregarded self-preservation. She had her back to him like he was a normal person; not a certifiable threat who could kill her in sixteen different ways before she could as much as blink. And that wasn’t even a recent development! Since he’d come to the tower, the woman had outright refused to exercise any caution around him. Even Steve had, understandably so, but not his dame._

_No._

_Even during one of his episodes, all the billionaire had done was ruffle his hair and ask the Winter Soldier whether he had preferences of his own, or whether he shared Bucky’s._

_Those episodes were less frequent now, and the Winter Soldier programming in him had all but appointed himself as Stark’s bodyguard, but that was hardly the point. The point was that she was so distressingly human, and yet she approached everything in her life as though she could beat it into submission on willpower and feistiness alone._

_Not unlike Stevie, then, from what he recalled._

_Their perfect match aside, Bucky had to push aside his knee jerk reaction to chide Stark. It wasn’t his place to do so, although he really wished that she took better care of herself._

_A painful twinge reminded him of why he’d pushed himself into willingly entering the genius’ space to begin with. “Um… my arm,” he ventured uncertainly, sounding as though he was asking her, rather than telling her._

_“Hurting?” she asked, frowning slightly in concern, apparently not needing him to be as articulate as Bucky knew he could be. Without hesitation, she left what she was doing, waving the hologram away with a careless flick of her wrist and making her way to him. Though Stevie had said she would, it still surprised Bucky that Stark would so easily make the time for him, despite the fact that he’d barely asked._

_Swallowing slightly in an attempt to quash uncharacteristic nerves, Bucky nodded jerkily. “Jus’ a little,” he muttered, already starting to second-guess his decision to bother the engineer. She was clearly busy with far more important things, he had no right to infringe on her time in the same way that he was infringing on every other aspect of her life, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t dealt with pain before, the HYDRA arm had been bulkier and more painful in every way that Stark’s new and improved version wasn’t, so he could very well just…_

_“Let’s see what we got here.” It wasn’t Stark’s voice that pulled him out of the spiral of thoughts, but the gentle touch as she took his hand and led him to the table they usually worked at. If she felt him tense up, she didn’t say anything about it, and after a few seconds, Bucky had to sheepishly admit that the contact helped. It wasn’t hesitant or pitying or cautionary, like most of the touches he’d received in the past two months. It was comforting and warm; felt like friendship. Like care and like trust._

_Never mind that it made next to no logical sense, it was the most at ease he’d felt since coming to the tower._

_Obediently, he sat at his side of the table, leaving his hand in Stark’s for her to direct his arm into the desired position. She was already making sacrifices, he knew; the table left little room for her to maneuver the arm, so she usually moved herself when doing maintenance, all in the name of creating a more comfortable environment for him that wasn’t a reminder of HYDRA; so the least he could do was try to assist her as much as possible by letting her move the arm to suit her needs._

_As he always did, he braced himself for pain that never came. Stark opened the panels in the arm up with clever fingers that soothed as they moved, even as they worked with the kind of exact precision that meant Bucky barely felt it any more than he would a butterfly’s wings. As she worked, she kept up a mindless string of chatter, asking his consent for every move before doing it and interspersing that with stories about her bots, or her latest invention, or one of her favourite topics; Steve and Peter._

_He became engrossed with one of her stories, so much so that he hadn’t even realized she was closing up the panels again until she patted his hand and smiled._

_“All done, Buckaroo. How’s it feel?”_

_Blinking a little in surprise, he rotated the arm, and in a rare moment of unguardedness, grinned brightly. “It’s great,” he told her truthfully, experimentally clenching his fist and marveling for the hundredth time at the sensory tech Stark had included, so that he felt everything the same as he did with his flesh hand. In a moment, he realized what he was doing, and his walls snapped right back up. “Thank you,” he added graciously, if a little hesitantly as he became reticent once more._

_Stark’s eyes lost some of the sparkle that had been there a moment ago, and Bucky felt like kicking himself when he saw those brown doe eyes dim._

_“No problem,” she replied, still smiling even though it was obvious that she wasn’t feeling it. “Seriously. If it’s ever bothering you again, don’t keep it waiting, just come on down anytime.”_

_Giving him one last smile that still looked a little sad, she swiveled her chair around and rolled the few feet to her other desk, picking up a pencil and beginning to scribble something on a page that looked full of equations that Bucky couldn’t hope to understand._

_But there was really only one thing that he wanted to understand just then, and it wasn’t mathematical._

_“Stark?”_

_“Mm?” she hummed distractedly, a response he’d seen her use often enough with the kid to know that she was still paying enough attention to listen to him._

_Without giving himself a chance to think about it, he blurted out, “Why are you doing this?”_

_Honestly, Bucky was getting tired of being on his guard around the genius. He just wanted her to take her proverbial slice of him, just do whatever she thought she needed to so that he could stop feeling like he was walking on landmines around her._

_“Uh…” she straightened slightly and stopped writing, glancing between him and the sheet of equations with a confused little furrow to her brow. “Because contrary to popular belief, my mechanics aren’t all about trial and error, and I sometimes need to do the calculations to make sure my brilliance is on point? Unless you mean why the paper,” she continued, gesturing with her pencil to illustrate her words. “In which case it’s because paper and pencil helps my thought process better than computers when it comes to longhand calculations.”_

_The former Sergeant took a second to process the words before shaking his head. “No,” he shook his head as if it would help clear his confusion, “I meant, why are you doing this with me? Why are you being so nice to me and helpin’ me? Why aren’t’cha aimin’ a repulsor at my head and takin’ a shot, or throwin’ me outta the tower, or somethin’ equally damagin’, I’d deserve it, too…”_

_“Do you and Steve realize that when y’all get agitated, the Brooklyn really starts to seep through?” Stark interrupted his little rant, head tilted curiously to one side. She didn’t look like someone who’d realized that they’d been given free reign to exact their revenge…_

_Realizing after a moment of silence that she was actually waiting for an answer, Bucky cautiously shook his head in the negative._

_“Well, now you know,” she shrugged lightly, sending him a gentle little smile. It was extraordinarily like the one she used on the rest of the team or Peter when she was indulging them with a little softness. As if to prove that observation, she stood up from her chair and crossed the small distance back to him, perching on the edge of the table; not too close that she could present an immediate threat, but close enough that he could see she was comfortable around him._

_And she reached out, slowly enough to telegraph her motions clearly, and brushed back a bit of his hair._

_Bucky’s eyes closed involuntarily at the soothing touch that reminded him in an instant of a childhood filled with warm hugs, fun, laughter, and a mother’s loving hands._

_“Bucky,” she started, and he reluctantly opened his eyes again to look up at Stark. “I’m not going to do any of those things to you. I’ve thought about it,” she admitted, and somehow, that comforted the former assassin, because it showed him she was being honest. “But that was before you even came to the tower. It was the knee-jerk reaction of a little girl who loved her mother more than she ever said. Or showed. The thing is, though, I realized pretty early on that you were punishing yourself way more than I could ever punish you. I also realized that what happened that night was something out of everyone’s control, except for HYDRA. It was them who made you do that, it wasn’t any conscious choice of yours.”_

_The words felt like salvation for him. He hadn’t expected anything out of Stark, least of all absolution, but in the face of her offering it, Bucky felt like he was being offered the key to freedom from a guilt that he’d been weighted down with ever since remembering who he actually was. It felt like the offer of a cure to a terminally ill patient._

_Still… he needed to say the words. She deserved that much. “I’m sorry,” he croaked helplessly, voice breaking twice. “I’m so, so sorry.”_

_Rather than looking vindicated, Stark looked like her heart was breaking. “Oh honey,” she murmured, pushing off the table and inching closer to wrap him in a hug that screamed comfort and security in a way that Bucky hadn’t felt since before he’d even joined the army. Helpless not to, he leaned into it, resting hiding his head against her toned stomach. “C’mon, hey, it’s okay,” she soothed, fingers threading through his long hair. He’d seen her do this, too, mostly to the kid when he needed it after a nightmare, and some part of him marveled at the gentle treatment. Mostly, though, he just basked in it, as one would in an oasis in the midst of the desert._

_He found himself wrapping his arms around her in turn, returning the hug with utmost care not to hurt the genius in the process. She didn’t even blink at the returned affection, even though Bucky was almost certain she knew that it was the first time he’d reciprocated anyone’s touch outside of Steve’s._

_“If it makes you feel any better,” she commented lightly, “you might have actually done me a favour with my dad. He was a mean sonofabitch, really.”_

_Stark said the words casually, like she was trying to get a rueful smile in return with the morbid humour, and while that might have been the case in another circumstance, this time all Bucky could focus on was the knowledge that Howard Stark had done enough of something pretty awful to his only child, in order for his kindhearted daughter to say something like that._

_Sort of made him wish he could take a quick trip to the past and clock the asshole in the face._

_He was distracted from his thoughts as she huffed a small laugh and glanced down at him to add, “Remind me someday, to tell you the story of how Howard Stark, inventor extraordinaire and predecessor to Stark Industries, got kicked in the shin by Peter the baby Avenger.”_

_The very thought made him grin back, and this time, he didn’t feel the need to hold back or raise any more walls._

_And for the first time, he heard the underlying message to her words._

_That he had a someday, here._

 

To the best of Bucky’s knowledge, that interaction between them had never seen the outside of Toni’s workshop. Not even Stevie knew what had transpired between them, as evidenced by the punk’s incessant badgering about it, and neither of them made any move to enlighten the curious Avengers. 

It was enough, for Bucky, to realize that the woman was offering him a home, a family, a place in this world, rather than condemning him for a past that he’d had no control over. In fact, it also furthered his therapy in leaps and bounds, because if Toni could forgive him then Bucky thought it wouldn’t be the most unrealistic thing to learn to forgive himself. 

She’d clip him over the head if he ever gave voice to the sentiment, but Bucky owed Toni more than he thought he could ever really repay.

Of course, that self-professed debt didn’t have anything to do with why he’d been so adamant about being involved in this little rescue mission. No, that had more to do with two things; his willingness to follow Stevie into the depths of hell, and his own fierce protectiveness over the girl genius. 

The former wasn’t a surprise to anyone – he and Steve were brothers of the best kind; brothers chosen; brothers who’d seen through variations of the same war only to find their way back to being best friends again – but the latter was still sometimes met with some disbelief. Understandably so. The only one who seemed to shrug it off as something normal was Steve himself, citing that Bucky had always been a protective mother hen and that Toni tended to inspire that kind of response in anyone who met her and knew how little she cared about her own safety. 

That answer had earned him dual smacks to the back of the head, but the man wasn’t wrong. 

Bucky forced himself out of his memories and turned his attention back to piloting the Quinjet. The thing practically did the work itself (or rather, through JARVIS, three cheers for StarkTech) but if he didn’t focus on flying, he was going to focus on trying to calculate the chances Toni had of surviving, and if he did that, he was going to lose his mind. 

Quite literally. The Winter Soldier programming in him was dormant for the most part, but all too happy to take the proverbial driver’s seat when the skillset was necessary for protecting his family. 

And Toni was that. She was his family. 

Clenching his jaw, Bucky refused to entertain any other outcome besides getting the genius out safe and bringing her back home.

He wasn’t going to lose any more of his family. 

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I took a bit of a different turn in this one, including some Bucky POV, so please let me know if it works! If it does, then I'll try writing in some other Avengers' perspectives :D Gotta have equal amounts of fluff to combat angst, right?! :D
> 
> -J <3


	3. The Cavalry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, loves! Here's a suuuuper long chapter full of the schmoopiest schmoop I could conceivably schmoop, for two reasons: 1, because I have exams in a week so the next update will probably take another week or two, and 2, because I watched Engame this weekend and I AM DESTROYED AND NEED TO BELIEVE THAT MY FANFICTION IS THE NEW CANON!
> 
> No spoilers, but seriously, guys. F**k MCU and the Russo brothers and of it. I'm not okay.

_Steve was strung tight as a bow and the look in his eyes could have melted the entire ice age as he prepared to storm the warehouse a few hundred feet below them. Their best Intel told them that the nondescript location was where their pain-in-the-ass of the week was holding his girlfriend hostage and honestly, what on earth had made them think that kidnapping the love of his life was a good idea?_

_Unless they’d been living under a rock, or had a rock dropped on their heads sometime in the past four years, they had no reason not to know that Toni had a super soldier boyfriend who would quite happily unleash hell on anyone who looked at the genius the wrong way, a giant green rage monster and a man in one of the deadliest mechanized armors in the world as her two best friends, and a literal demigod and two formidable spies to round off a family who loved her very much._

_What morons._

_Even more so if they’d hurt her, because then they were morons with an expiration date in the very near future._

_“I’m landing as close as I can get,” Clint’s flat and serious tone broached the silence around them, the lack of playfulness telling on his part of how angry he was, as well. “We’ll still have to walk a little, but it’s better to have the element of surprise than…”_

_He was interrupted by an explosion so massive, its waves managed to rock the Quinjet._

_The warehouse was up in flames._

_Panic slammed into Steve like a linebacker at a championship game. He could feel the blood drain out of his face and he heard himself, in a detached sort of way, barking orders at Clint to get them the fuck down right now, fucking Christ…_

_He was out of the jet even before they’d fully touched down and taking off running towards the pluming black smoke. From behind him, he vaguely registered pandemonium, which he was almost certain included Bruce trying to keep from Hulking out, but none of that hit the radar of importance right then._

_She was the only thing that did._

_‘Please be okay, Toni, c’mon sweetheart…’_

_When he burst through the trees and into the clearing, the first thing he saw was the warehouse, blazing heat being emitted from the fire that was still going strong. Too strong, a part of mind desperately realized. Way too strong for even a super soldier to survive going through, let alone a human._

_He was about to screw his own logic, anyway, and storm the blazing castle so to speak, when his enhanced hearing caught what his initial visual had missed, distracted as he was by the raging fire._

_“…own fault, really. Why is it that all you bad guys conveniently forget the part where **I’m a fucking genius** who built the most sophisticated armor in the world from a box of goddamn **scraps**?! Fine, okay, I’m a squishy human with no training in espionage, but that does not make me an easy fucking target, Christ!”_

_Toni was perched on the hood of an SUV, legs crossed as she sat Indian-style, looking a little bruised and bloodied, but otherwise none the worse for wear as she lectured four men bound with zip ties on the floor in front of her. Soot and ash and dirt covered her from top to bottom and she was scowling hard at the bound men, and she had rarely looked more beautiful to Steve than in that moment._

_Having not seen him yet, or apparently heard the noisy entrance of the other Avengers, Toni simply continued ranting at her captors; if they could even be called that, anymore._

_“I am so sick of this, seriously, do you know that this is the third time I’ve been kidnapped in the past year? And apparently you guys just keep getting dumber because you literally gave me free reign in your labs. Who the fuck does that? Do you have absolutely no idea who I am? Did you kidnap the wrong person? Because that is honestly the only thing that could possibly redeem you at this point.”_

_Steve bit the inside of his cheek, irrational laughter bubbling up, and before he or the team could make their presence known, one of the men on the ground decided to pipe up._

_“You didn’t have free reign,” he spat, as though Toni was the one at fault. “We had you handcuffed in a room two floors up!”_

_Even without seeing her face properly, Steve knew that his girlfriend was rolling her eyes. “I could pick cuffs before I could tie my shoelaces,” she shot back with such disdain that Steve grinned. “And you didn’t even keep the lab secure, you practically invited me in.”_

_Gradually, his heartbeat slowed to a slightly more acceptable rate, and Steve took quick stock of his team before he did anything else. Toni seemed to have things handled on her end, after all._

_Bruce looked a lot better, amusement in his eyes now, rather than green streaks of impending rage, and both Natasha and Clint were smirking as they regarded the spectacle in front of them. Thor was outright laughing along with Rhodes, who was also grinning like a proud papa at a PTA meeting._

_And Steve? He was both amused, and filled with an awe that never seemed to end as he regarded his girl._

_“Honestly,” Toni was tutting now, shaking her head, “what would your mothers think about all this? You, over there, Frederick,” she gestured at a man whose name Steve would bet his shield wasn’t Frederick. “Does this seem like something your mother would have wanted you to be involved in?”_

_The man shook his head, actually slumping a little in the face of Toni’s reprimand. “No, ma’am,” he confirmed with a chagrined look on his face. “She wanted me to become an accountant.”_

_“Now, see, that would have been a good option,” the genius threw her hands up in exasperation, making Steve laugh affectionately. “I might’ve taken you on at SI, in another life. You know, one where you didn’t land yourself in prison.”_

_She lapsed into a thoughtful silence and Steve decided it would probably be best to announce his presence before Toni thought up some way in which she could offer one of her kidnappers a job._

_Hooking his shield to his back, he started towards her. “Hey, beautiful,” he called out, one of his standard greetings for his lover. “I thought we agreed to save the fireworks for special occasions only?”_

_God, Toni was rubbing off on him if he was choosing flippancy as his first approach to this situation._

_“Oh Captain, my Captain!” Toni positively beamed as she caught sight of him, hopping gracefully off the hood and meeting him halfway. She did a little leap into his arms and Steve grinned against her as he caught her, swinging her a little from side to side. “I thought you might need a hint where to pick me up,” she told him as she pulled back, eyes sparkling mischievously. “Plus, they broke my phone, so I broke their base of operations.”_

_From behind him, Clint commented wryly, “That seems like a fair trade-off.”_

 

As Steve paced the Quinjet, he comforted himself with the memory. People, himself included, so often forgot just how brilliant Toni was; her mind was like a steel trap and it worked faster and more accurately that some computers. She wielded any tool like it was a magical wand and she looked at what most people would deem to be junk, and saw something amazing. She ran numbers and rattled off complicated equations like she was reciting the alphabet. The woman was the personification of futuristic and if there was anyone in the world who front-lined the phrase ‘pulling a rabbit out of the hat’, it was Toni. She had this insane knack to come out of any situation on top. 

Who was to say that she wouldn’t figure out a way to beat natural disasters as well? 

Nobody. Nobody was to say, and Steve wouldn’t let them even if they wanted to, because he needed to believe right now that she would beat the odds yet again. Nothing less than that was an acceptable outcome to him. 

Toni was used to high standards, and that extended all the way back to her childhood. Steve had heard many a story of how Howard Stark used to push the envelope in terms of what he could realistically expect from his only child and yet Toni, more often than not, somehow rose to the occasion. As much as she was upfront, now, about her father’s toxic child-rearing techniques, the genius had always reluctantly maintained that the Stark patriarch had, at the very least, primed her to face similar expectations in the rest of the course of her life. 

Whether it was MIT lecturers or stuffy old board members or even SHIELD, Toni managed their impossible standards with all the grace of a ballet dancer. Stress and pressure didn’t fluster her; in fact, Steve would have wagered that those things only added to the thrill for the genius; and she effortlessly maintained her status as one of the foremost figures in the world in terms of developmental technology and business, all while being part of a team that saved the world on a regular basis. 

And, more recently, being a mother. 

It hadn’t surprised him in the least when Toni had led their conversation by asking about Peter. She was without a doubt one of the best mothers he’d ever known, despite the fact that she constantly seemed to fear messing it up. Steve knew with a great deal of certainty that there was little, if anything, that Toni wouldn’t do for her son. For their son. 

That in itself was another small comfort. Toni had fought, before, to return home, and would fight doubly hard now because she had him, the Avengers and Peter to come back for. 

Sighing inwardly, Steve slipped back into parade rest. Until he touched down in Argentina, there was nothing else he could do except count. 

Count comforts, and count every minute of the agonizingly long remaining 3 hours of the journey. 

 

###

 

As far as Bruce Banner was concerned, Toni Stark was a goddamn menace. 

And for the record, in all the years he’d known her, he was still entirely unable to say those words without the fondest of grins lighting up his face.

From the very first moment they’d met on that helicarrier, with a homicidal Norse God on board with them that was intent on screwing with all their heads, Bruce had been struck with a singular notion: Toni Stark was an unstoppable force of nature. She was unapologetically herself and in so doing, invited people to be the same. To be themselves. Certainly, she’d done that much for him, which was saying a lot, considering that Bruce had once lived with the sole purpose of not being himself. 

Like many people, he’d been taken aback with Toni when she’d introduced herself. Not only was her first comment with regards to his work as a scientist, rather than his monumental screw up in creating the Hulk, but her second comment had been the furthest thing from the disgusted mention of the Other Guy that Bruce could have anticipated. 

She’d made it clear right from the off that she was completely unafraid of him; something which Bruce couldn’t have imagined being gifted with in a thousand lifetimes of being the Hulk. She’d forced him to embrace the side of himself that he hated by treating him the same way she would a friend. A brother. By treating the Other Guy in the same way. The first time he’d Hulked out accidentally in front of her, a couple weeks after the battle with Loki, she’d simply sighed and rolled her eyes at the subsequent destruction in the lab before going right up to the Hulk and introducing herself. 

Sometimes, Bruce still wondered how that interaction had worked out in her favour, but he was endlessly grateful for it. He knew with certainty that he wouldn’t have ever forgiven himself or the Hulk if he’d attacked Toni. 

As it were, his ferocious other half, so to speak, was positively adoring of the genius. Whenever Toni was injured, be it in battle or a simple lab accident, the Other Guy expressed his disapproval very loudly and vocally to the scientist; for the Hulk, it was as simple as Toni being nice to him. His friend. Friends needed to be protected. End of story. 

In a way, the discovery that the Hulk was able to feel something more than rage changed Bruce’s entire perspective. It weighed in heavily on the side of Toni’s theory; that the Hulk was just a supercharged alter ego of himself with thoughts and emotions, albeit primal, that went beyond what was immediately prevalent. 

There was rage… but there were other things too. The ability to identify and care for family. The desire to protect. The presence of mind to follow orders and yet still act independently. 

Bruce had never thought that he would ever reach a point in his life where he saw the Hulk as anything more than shameful evidence of his failure. 

But then, Bruce had never anticipated meeting someone like Toni Stark. 

He still remembered the day that he’d realized how far he’d come – how much he’d gained – and per usual, Toni was right in the middle of that epiphany… 

 

_“Brucie Bear, Sci-Bro, yin to my yang, I require your most immediate and undivided attention!”_

_Like she always did, Toni barged into his lab with little to no warning and some vague, dramatic proclamation to catch his attention. By this point, the scientist was so used to it that he barely blinked; his only outward reaction was the way his lips curled into a faintly amused smile as he continued jotting down notes on the reaction of his latest experiment._

_Because he wanted to get a rise out of her, he hummed nonchalantly. “I’m sure you do.”_

_Predictably, she huffed, and Bruce had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling as she hopped gracefully on to the countertop where he was working, leaning slightly to try and obstruct his view from the yellow legal pad he was focused on. He didn’t stop writing, or even glance up at her, and as he’d expected it would, his patience ultimately won out against hers._

_“Bannn-nnnerrrrr,” she sing-songed his last name, flopping to lie across his workspace and on top of the legal pad so that he was forced to look down at her. Beaming a grin at him when his lips twitched tellingly, she announced, “I’m pretty sure I’ve revolutionized science as we know it!”_

_Finally, Bruce let his smile stretch across his face. Since he wasn’t being bombarded with equations and theories that even he had to work to keep up with, he was pretty sure that Toni hadn’t actually revolutionized anything, except perhaps a faster way to toast Thor’s poptarts. More than likely, the genius had simply grown bored or stretched thin with her own projects, and was seeking some sort of a distraction._

_‘Or, option C,’ his mind supplied disapprovingly, ‘she’s exhausted and yet refuses to sleep because she wants to do something else.’_

_Sure enough, his keen eyes picked up on the hollowness of her eyes, which looked almost bruised with fatigue, and the faint furrow to her forehead that suggested a pounding headache. Two standard signs that Toni had pushed herself past her own limits. Again._

_Sighing internally, he masked his concern with a wry smile. “That so?” he humored her, poking her cheek playfully with his finger. “Did you revolutionize my idea of science, or your idea of science?”_

_“You wound me,” she mock sniffed, swinging herself back upright now that she’d gotten his attention. Bruce was half-tempted to go back to writing, but in truth, the distraction wasn’t unwanted. He’d been hunched over his desk for a long time and he could do with a break. “Why don’t you ever believe me when I say that?”_

_“Because you’ve said it almost bi-weekly since I’ve been living here?”_

_“It’s like you don’t trust me,” she continued, heedless of his answer and his grin. “Or worse, like you don’t trust my genius. Do you not trust my genius, Brucie Bear? Is this because of that explosion last week? Because that was for science. You can’t hold that against me. Would you hold it against Beethoven if he broke a couple pencils while composing the Moonlight Sonata?”_

_Bruce raised an eyebrow. “I’m not even going to start picking all that apart.”_

_“Probably for the best,” Toni agreed cheerfully, brown eyes still bright even through the obvious signs of exhaustion. “My scientific discoveries aren’t even why I’m here. C’mon. I was dispatched to fetch you for movie night.”_

_Bruce snorted at the irony, but began turning off burners and timers affably. “It’s a strange turn of events when you’re the one dragging me out of my lab. Are you even going to make it through a movie? No offense, but you look like you’re going to fall asleep in the middle of chewing dinner.”_

_“You’re not entirely off base, mon ami,” the genius replied, wrinkling her nose. “On the plus side, this week’s Clint’s turn to pick, so even if I fall asleep, I wouldn’t be missing much.”_

_She made a good point. In the past few months since Steve had initiated team bonding and subsequent movie nights, Clint had gained some notoriety for having the absolute weirdest taste in everything. It never failed to amaze Bruce, the kinds of the things the archer came up with, and if anything, he was looking forward to the sheer absurdity of the night that was invariably in store for them._

_He was pretty sure Clint actively tried to stump them with it, these days._

_Turning back to Toni, he adopted a sly grin. “Of course, if you fall asleep, you’ll be denying the good captain his opportunity to court you in the guise of being a good team leader.”_

_It was fairly obvious, to Bruce and to the rest of the team, that Steve was as far gone for their resident genius as she was for him. With Steve, it was as blatant as lingering gazes and fierce protectiveness and curling up next to Toni on these movie nights. With Toni, it wasn’t as obvious, her affection only becoming evident if one were to pay attention to the way she always watched his back in battle, or the way she constantly took little measures to keep the Captain comfortable in a time that he still wasn’t entirely at ease with. As long as anyone looked, though, it became clear that they were dancing around each other in the worst way._

_Bruce had looked. And he had a stake in the wager regarding how they would eventually get together. Because they definitely would._

_Toni, however, was firmly entrenched in denial._

_“Court me?” she snorted, but no amount of brushing off could hide the faint blush that stole across her cheeks. “Did you just step off the set of a romantic drama in London, 1910?”_

_The scientist smirked knowingly, but said nothing. More often than not, Toni talked herself into her own realizations, and even when she didn’t, Bruce found that it paid to simply listen to her. For all that she often rambled, Toni frequently brought up some very interesting thoughts and theories, some of which had the ability to draw Bruce in like a moth to flame._

_Besides. She was his best friend, it was part of the job description to listen to her rambling._

_Today she seemed to be too tired to even do that much, though, so she only huffed another sigh and hooked her arm with his. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she claimed airily. “I’m in the middle of my steamy love affair with you, Brucie Bear, remember?”_

_“Ah, right,” he chuckled, shaking his head as he recalled the recent gossip rag reports about him and Toni engaging in a post-battle lip-lock two weeks ago. “Y’know, Steve still hasn’t stopped glaring at me for those articles.”_

_“Are you kidding me?” Toni scoffed. “You think you’ve got it bad, I’ve been getting stink-eyed by your groupies every time I leave the goddamn tower, and let me tell you, there are equal amounts of fangirls and fanboys. The barista at the Starbucks opposite the tower? She literally wrote the words ‘Don’t hurt him, he’s precious’ on my Grande. Weirdest spelling of my name I’ve ever seen.”_

_Bruce blinked, taken aback at the words. Toni kept right on complaining about his apparent fan base, but the scientist was still stuck on the fact that there was anyone in the world who thought of him as someone to be protected. The Hulk wasn’t exactly the kind of thing people loved… or so he’d thought._

_Realizing that he’d stopped listening, Toni glanced at him askance. “Still with me, honeypie?” she teased, but her brown eyes registered faint concern._

_“Still with you,” he nodded, shooting her a bewildered little smile. “I just didn’t realize that anyone was a fan of anything to do with me or the Other Guy.”_

_Abruptly, Toni stopped walking, and when he turned around, she looked as serious as he’d ever seen her, save for that day in the helicarrier when she’d told him a little about how she perceived the arc reactor. With a gentleness that she rarely showed, she took one of his hands and bored her intense gaze into his._

_“Not everyone is an assclown like General Ross,” she told him firmly. “You’re a hero, Bruce. You **and** the Other Guy. You’re a member of the Avengers and no small part of why this city is still standing after what Loki put it through.” Smiling wryly, she leaned up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, not minding that he was frozen in place by her words. “You’re the only one that hasn’t realized it, yet.”_

_Was that… true?_

_Bruce had spent a long time resenting the other part of himself, and he would be the first to admit that he wasn’t exactly unbiased when it came to his opinion on the Hulk. And his opinion on himself, to be honest, because it was a mistake that had been of his own doing. He was so married to the idea that he was a monster that he’d never considered what effect his new position on this team of heroes would have on public opinion._

_What hit him even more, though, was the firm conviction behind Toni’s words. Whatever the public thought of him didn’t really even matter in the face of his teammate and best friend’s unshakeable belief that he was good. That he was a hero. A hero among people who had become his family, he distantly realized as well, because what else could one call a group of people who ate together, laughed together, fought together, stood together?_

_He was a part of something truly amazing. And perhaps he was the only one that hadn’t realized it yet._

_“Toni, you were supposed t-…oh,” Steve stopped abruptly in his tracks, seeming to take in Bruce’s close proximity to Toni, and the fact that their faces were still relatively close to each other. Blue eyes flashed and his lips thinned, but he sent a strained smile their way regardless. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt. Dinner’s up, when you guys are ready.”_

_He turned on his heel and left before either of them could speak, and despite the earth-shattering epiphany he’d just had, Bruce found himself sighing mournfully without thinking._

_“Is Captain America too righteous to poison my dinner?” he wondered aloud._

_Toni, flustered and a little nonplussed, replied with an uncertain, “Probably… but Steve might not be.”_

_Well, damn. At least it was Clint’s turn to pick dinner._

 

Though it had taken him close to two weeks to convince Steve that he and Toni weren’t involved romantically, it was still one of his favourite memories of the genius. It reminded him that despite his own insecurities, there was always at least one person in the world who would always stick with him and who saw him as the best version of himself. It reminded him that there was one person in the world who’d carved out a place for him as family and who loved every part of him without reservation and without qualifiers.

Now, if only that one person in the world didn’t get herself into trouble on such a regular basis… 

Still, Bruce mused to himself as he went through some deep breathing on the Quinjet in an attempt to hold the Hulk at bay. He wouldn’t change Toni for anything. Even now, while the Other Guy practically radiated agitation at the prospect of _‘Friend, hurt’_ , he knew that he would take all the stress and worry in the world, over not having her at all. 

Distracted from his meditation techniques by the buzzing of his phone, Bruce sighed and checked the screen. It was a text from Natasha, and while that normally wouldn’t have distracted him when he was in the field and she wasn’t, this time, he had to factor in that the redhead was part of the Avengers who were on babysitting duty. 

And while he trusted them with the little boy who was a pseudo nephew to them all, he still hadn’t forgotten the time that Clint had suggested teaching Peter darts as a suitable babysitting activity. 

Unlocking his phone, he scanned the text quickly and breathed a sigh of relief, both because it was nothing to do with Peter, and because of the information Nat had passed on. 

“Steve?” The Captain was in full battle mode, posture rigid and eyes flat, but he still acknowledged the address silently by flicking his gaze towards Bruce. “Nat texted,” he relayed, waving his phone in the air demonstratively, something he was pretty sure he’d picked up from Toni. “Rhodes got word and he’s close-by, and headed there, too. ETA three hours, same as us.”

The blond only nodded once in response, but Bruce recognized the flickering in his eyes as relief. Steve and Jim still had a bit of a rocky standing, but they would both put that aside in order to help Toni. 

Despite the fact that she was a goddamn menace. 

(And for the record, Bruce still grinned fondly at the thought.)

 

###

 

“Rest well, young warrior,” Thor rumbled quietly, smiling faintly at the sleeping form of their precious little charge. “May good dreams follow you into sleep.”

Some – closer to most – in his team would probably have been surprised to find that the Thunder God did, in fact, possess some level of volume control. Granted, it was a skill that he’d been made to learn after their esteemed leaders had adopted their son, and it was still something that he had to consciously practice, but he was doing much better with it. He took special care, especially in times like this, not taking lightly to his sworn duty to watch over the little one. The boy had much to be protected from, although Thor was regretful that such a harsh battle as this one had to be fought by one as young as Peter. He had been much older, himself, the first time he’d ever had cause to fear the loss of one of his beloved parents, and though Peter hadn’t been made explicitly aware of the direness of the situation, the Norse God could tell that there was some level of understanding present. 

How else would one explain the unnatural disquiet from the normally exuberant young lad? Or the fact that he intermittently but frequently checked with Thor or Lady Natasha regarding the whereabouts of the Captain and Lady Stark when normally, he was content in their presence for longer than a few hours?

Though he knew not the specifics of the trouble, Thor had no doubt that Peter was well aware that his mother was in some sort of distress. Perhaps his certainty came from his own unerring sense of danger when it came close to his mother, but Lady Frigga was not nearly so courted by trouble as his iron clad comrade and Thor knew that it could just as easily be coming from him projecting his own anxiety on to the child. 

He became surer in his conviction the longer he stood watch over Peter, helpless to do anything against the fitful rest and small whimpers that occasionally left the child’s mouth. Thor had so hoped that regaling the boy with a tale of one of their battles before his nap would provide some reassurance; would, at the very least, serve as a reminder that his parents were Avengers and heroes and warriors of the highest order, and thus capable of surviving far more than a mere earthquake; but it seemed that the fear had followed the child into sleep. Curling his fists in frustration, Thor aimed a stormy blue gaze out the window, set off in the distance as he wished fervently for Heimdall’s power of Sight. If he could just see Toni, just know that she was alive, then he would be far better equipped to shelve his own fear and worry and deal with Peter’s. 

As it were, he possessed no such ability, and since he was not content to leave his post unguarded for long enough to call forth for the bifrost and ask his friend for an update of the Woman of Iron, the Thunder God had to settle for getting a little breathing room when Lady Natasha came to relieve him of his watch. 

His thoughts were a dangerous thing to get lost in during this time, so Thor strove to keep his mind alert and positive. It wasn’t altogether an easy task, even despite his generally sunny disposition, because for all that he was what many would call undyingly optimistic, the Thunder God was still a warrior. A warrior who had lived a great deal longer than most and who had seen horrors stretching from all ends of Yggdrasill. Thor had seen the best of every realm and the worst as well, and he had seen the mightiest warriors felled by a greater foe than any. 

Fate.

There was no denying Destiny; that much he knew for certain. Death came for everyone eventually, usually not when they were ready for it, and it would not be held back when it did. Not by the greatest willpower, nor the most boundless love in all the nine realms, of which Toni Stark possessed both. 

It was amusing, now, to think of how dismissive he’d been of Stark upon their first meeting. It was only after she’d come after him, and damn near bested him in combat to boot, that he’d realized what a worthy comrade-in-arms he’d come across.

And it was only after the battle had been won, that he’d realized what a brilliant friend he’d acquired, too…

 

_Weariness, the likes of which he’d rarely known before, swamped the Thunder God as he stood stoically on the roof of Stark’s tower. Barely a few hours previously, he’d stood two floors below and begged, **begged** his brother to put an end to this madness. To join him. To show him that it wasn’t too late to go back to how things were, to go back to a time when they’d been brothers in every way._

_And as Loki seemed wont to do, recently, he’d rebuffed any notion that they could come back from this disharmony that had befallen them._

_It weighted his heart down; made Thor wonder just when and how his favourite person in all the realms had stopped believing that he had a brother who thought the world of him. Was it his fault? Had his teasing crossed the line into mockery? Had his childish need to compete been misconstrued as a desire to undermine? Had his…_

_“It isn’t your fault, you know.”_

_It was uncommon for anyone to get the drop on Thor, but the Thunder God had to concede defeat as he turned around sharply to see Lady Stark approaching him. She was no longer guarded by her magnificent metal armor, but vulnerable now, as she stood before him draped in little more than soft black pants and a short, strappy vest, the likes of which he’d seen Midgardians use whilst exercising._

_“Lady Stark,” he greeted with a dip of his head in acknowledgment. Distracted by a thought, he chose to voice it rather than face the kind, albeit abrupt, words she’d spoken. “You were injured today. You should not be here, I believe.” Even as he spoke, Thor shifted to the side in a wordless invitation for her to join him._

_She waved a dismissive hand, rolling her eyes. “I go a lot of places I shouldn’t, Point Break,” she told him airily, and though he still did not understand the nickname, her easy tone and brave soul made him smile. “Besides, I’m alright. And I’m enacting the clause that says it’s my tower and I can be as reckless with my injuries as I want to be while I’m in it.”_

_Without bothering to argue with her, Thor simply removed his cape and wrapped it around her shoulders before gently leading her to the set-up of chairs that was closest to them. Stark muttered complaints under her breath, but she neither pushed him away nor did she return his cape, so Thor reasoned that she was just being contrary._

_“I really am okay,” she told him, voice softer than he’d heard it so far as she caught him glancing uncertainly at her when he sat down. Sometimes, he miscalculated his own strength, and he didn’t wish to bring any more harm to someone he considered an ally, and who he greatly admired and respected. “I’ve taken far worse in my lifetime than a couple bruises and some broken bones.”_

_Perhaps her words were meant for comfort, but Thor couldn’t take them as such. Instead, he became concerned as to what his newfound comrade had gone through for her to make light of such injuries._

_Rather than force her to dwell on what was obviously unpleasant memories, Thor offered sincerely, “I apologize for my haste in attacking you earlier, Lady Stark. I have difficulty controlling my temper, in matters where my family is involved, and I deeply regret my part in adding to your injury tally.”_

_But Stark was already waving him off, even as he spoke._

_“Don’t worry about it,” she assured him. “I wasn’t without my share of the blame for that one. I meant it; no hard feelings.” Sending him a warm smile, the woman behind the armor leaned back in her place and redirected her eyes to the skies above them. “While we’re handing out absolution, allow me to reiterate. It isn’t your fault, you know.”_

_Thor mimicked her pose, finding that it was far easier to contemplate those words while the beauty of the stars and the vastness of the skies distracted him._

_After a few moments of silence, he spoke. “How is it that you’re so sure?”_

_“I understand your brother,” she answered promptly, and the answer surprised Thor enough to keep him quiet. “I know what it feels like to want so badly to prove your worth to someone you love and admire, that you’re willing to lose yourself in the process.” Her voice was heavy, now, saturated with something that Thor feared he would never quite comprehend. “I also know that it can become so all-encompassing that even the fiercest love can’t combat it. At least, not right away.”_

_Thor sensed that he needed to be quiet if he wanted his gracious host to keep talking, and so he did, eager for anything that could help him better fathom the dark place his brother had fallen into._

_His silence was rewarded when she continued a few beats later. “I didn’t have a brother like you, but I had a butler. He was more like a father to me, really. His name was Jarvis and he was the person who loved me most in the whole world. That was something I never had to doubt.” Stark sighed, rubbing a hand over her face, and Thor regretted that he was inadvertently adding to her pain. He was about to offer her the chance to defer the tale to another day, when she began talking again, unprompted. “I hurt him… God, so many times, before I realized that he loved me unconditionally. That I didn’t need to do, or say, or be anything but myself for him to love me. It took a lot for me to get there, but when I did, it changed a lot of things for me.”_

_“What did your Jarvis do?” Thor asked, almost tentatively._

_Stark shifted her gaze back to him and smiled, a serenity therein that nobody could deny. “He stayed,” she replied simply. “He stayed, and he never gave up on me. He just kept right on loving me until I figured it out, and then after that too. He never lost hope in me.”_

_For a long moment, the Thunder God contemplated those words. She was right, he knew; the fault lay with nothing and no one save for the inexplicable desire for Loki to prove something to their father, something which he needn’t have to do at all. Once he realized that, they might fight side by side again, but for now, Thor had to exercise time and patience and faith._

_“Then that is what I shall do,” he nodded decisively, bestowing his warmest smile upon his companion. “He is a perceptive man, your Jarvis. When might I meet him, so that I may thank him for his unintended wisdom?”_

_Stark paused and he could almost see the darkness of old grief encroaching on her. “He died, a few months after I turned 18,” she revealed, and though she sounded as if she were aiming for an even tone, Thor clearly heard the devastation that was still rife inside her._

_“Then I shall hope to meet him one day in the future,” the Thunder God replied solemnly, nodding once in respect. “Amidst those in the halls of Valhalla. It is known to be the final resting place of the…”_

_“The heroes,” Stark nodded, smiling faintly when he looked at her in pleased surprise._

_“You have heard the tales, then?”_

_She nodded, smile growing slightly. “I knew them as children’s stories, told to me a long time ago, but I do know them.” Nudging him playfully, she added, “I’ll tell you the stories sometime, we can see how much of it is actually accurate.”_

_“As long as it tells of my greatness, it shall be a fine piece of work,” Thor replied straight-faced, but his faux seriousness only lasted until Stark began to laugh, amused at his arrogance in the way that one who pretended to be similarly immodest would be. Seemingly far more at ease with him now, she rested her head upon his shoulder, and Thor was careful not to move lest he dislodge her._

_“He might not realize this right now, but…” she hesitated briefly before murmuring, “Loki’s lucky to have you, Thor.”_

_The words were a compliment of the highest sort, the kind that made the Thunder God realize just how much lurked beneath the surface of the complicated woman who bore the Stark name. In some ways, she reminded him much of Lady Sif, so competent and fierce in battle was she, but in other ways, she reminded him of Lady Frigga; for she was as gentle and compassionate and kind as his mother._

_“Just as this team is lucky to have you, Lady Stark,” he returned sincerely, reaching down to squeeze her hand ever so gently in his._

_She smiled against his shoulder and he did too, when he felt the slight movement. “Call me Toni.”_

 

Thor had walked without thinking as he reminisced, but he was unsurprised to find himself back at the very same spot he’d been with Toni all those years ago. Their team had become a family since then and just as she’d predicted, Thor was making headway in finding that with Loki again, not entirely without Toni’s frequent guidance and listening ear. There were times, Thor knew, in which his brother himself had sought out the counsel of the Woman of Iron, and whatever it was that they spoke about, it was helping tremendously to repair the fractured relationship that existed between him and the Trickster God. 

As if summoned by the thought of him, a projection of Loki appeared alongside him. 

“Any news?” his brother asked without fanfare or preamble, and that in itself told a story about how attached Loki might have grown to Toni since his attempted invasion of New York. 

The Thunder God shook his head in the negative. “The Captain is on his way to her, along with the Hulk and the Winter Soldier,” he replied grimly. “For now, I’m meant to be holding the fort at the home base and guarding the little one.”

It was a testament, too, to the reluctant affection that Loki seemed to have gained for young Peter during these infrequent visits with Stark, that he didn’t scoff at the notion of Thor obeying orders instead of helping Toni. Instead, he nodded once, looking displeased and agitated. Though he understood the sentiment, Thor was helpless to offer his brother any platitudes. They had both been raised with the clear knowledge of how fragile human life was. 

Of course, at the time, they could have never anticipated caring for any humans as deeply as they did now. 

“My magic is more suited to trickery and mischief,” Loki muttered, clearly disgruntled. “Locating her is beyond my abilities; not that Odin would consent to it, anyway. Have you asked Heimdall for his assistance?”

Thor couldn’t help echoing a hint of Loki’s bitterness as he replied, “Father has forbidden the interference of Asgard in any mortal affairs.”

The Trickster God cursed under his breath, but to his credit, he didn’t launch into a rant about their father as he might have a few years ago. It was progress, Thor knew, and progress that he fully intended on being happy about. Just a bit later, maybe. 

“When she returns,” Loki huffed, and Thor didn’t miss the use of _‘when’_ rather than _‘if’_ , because apparently Stark could inspire hope in even his cynical brother, “be sure and tell her that I am greatly unamused by her heroics at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t that.” 

Before he could offer any response, Loki was gone again, and Thor was alone on the rooftop with no chance of Toni Stark sneaking up behind him and granting him the comfort that he so deeply wished for.

Dragging in a deep breath, the Thunder God watched as the sky lit up with a few bolts of lightning, reacting to his tumultuous emotions. “You had better be well, Toni,” he murmured, as if he could hope for the words to reach her ears somehow. “Valhalla is not ready for the Woman of Iron yet.”

 

###

 

The worst part about being trapped underneath a goddamn building wasn’t the multitude of injuries she’d sustained in the wreckage, nor the inability to dig herself out, or even the dreary lack of light. 

No. The worst part was the _quiet._

Everything around Toni, save for the kid’s soft breaths, was completely still; oppressive in how it totally stifled one who generally surrounded themselves with noises of some kind as a way to drown out the noise in the back of their mind. There was no _scritch-scratch_ of Steve’s pencil on paper as he sketched or intermittent whirring of her bots. There was no peal of delighted giggles as JARVIS patched her into a feed of Peter playing with Thor or groaning of the vents from where Clint was skulking because he was bored and Nat was busy swimming laps or sharpening her knives. There was no random call from Bruce to double check the ionization levels of his current experiment or companionable clanging as Bucky explored the engines of one of her cars while she worked. 

There was only quiet. The sound of her own ragged breath and the looming certainty that those breaths could very well be limited. 

It did not make for ideal conditions to keep herself from panicking. 

She’d long since powered the suit, and effectively JARVIS, down, wanting to conserve power now that she was being forced to use the backup. The darkness, at least, was combated by her arc, and as much as she hated the thing, she had to admit that this was another in a long string of instances wherein the stupid thing had saved her ass. 

It was still ugly and invasive and terrible, though, she stuck by that perception (Shut up, Steve).

_Steve, Steve, Steve… think about Steve,_ her mind suggested helpfully, and it almost made Toni snort in laughter. Not because thinking of Steve was a bad idea, but because she spent most of her waking and sleeping moments thinking of the man in some way or another. He wasn’t ever truly out of her thoughts. 

Even when she’d hated him – or, well, she’d thought she’d hated him – she’d still been thinking about him. In the little cushion of time between the battle of New York and when Steve had shown up at the Tower with a duffel and a look that was equally lost and hopeful, Toni had spent an inordinate amount of time alternately worrying about what the super soldier was doing and how he was handling the shock transition into this century’s tech-filled travels, and muttering under her breath, mostly to her bots, about how stupid, self-righteous Captain America could shove his stupid, self-righteous shield up his stupid, self-righteous ass if he looked at her one more time like he was measuring her and coming up short. 

That was a direct quotation. 

At the time, she had resented him for doing something akin to what her father had done to her for the first 17 years of her life. That was okay, though, the resentment, because Toni was pretty sure that Steve had resented her right back for not being the last link to his past, as he might’ve hoped she would be. 

Astoundingly, that resentment had bled away as quickly as it had been formed. In a twist of fair fortune, Steve had decided to reach out for help the day he’d come to the tower, whether or not he’d known it at the time, and Toni had happened to be on the alternate cycle of worrying over him rather than cursing his name. She’d welcomed him with all the warmth she normally reserved for a select four or five people in her life, and Steve had repaid her in kind by fumbling through an apology the very next night. Toni had been surprised to realize that she didn’t really need to hear it, and they’d decided to let bygones be bygones and just start fresh. 

So they had. 

Toni was hard-pressed to pinpoint the exact moment when she’d fallen in love with Steve, but she chalked it down to a gradual process. What had started out as enmity had transformed into friendship, and then blossomed into love, and though she didn’t fully recognize how it had happened, she was still enormously grateful for it. And though she wasn’t sure when the transition had occurred, she could still remember the exact moment, in HD clarity, wherein she’d realized it had happened…

 

_She woke slowly._

_This, in and of itself, was a surprise, on account of the fact that recent nightmares had her jolting into consciousness with a racing heart, clammy palms and a desperate scream trapped in her throat. She had almost grown used to it by now; not least of all because she’d been similarly plagued for months on end after Afghanistan; enough so that the process of sliding gently into wakefulness, surrounded by warmth and comfort and a foreign feeling of being well-rested, actually made her pause in genuine confusion. A feat for one as sharp-minded as she prided herself on being._

_What was more surprising, though, was what she woke up to._

_Toni wasn’t a cuddler. That wasn’t a personal choice – indeed, Rhodey sometimes teased her about being touch-starved, and there was always just a hint of something sad and serious in his eyes when he said it – but one made out of necessity, and she tended to hold herself back from people, especially in sleep because it was when she was at her most vulnerable. The last time she’d been held in sleep was a memorable night back when they were in MIT, when Rhodey had bundled her in blankets and had her stretch out on the sofa with her head in his lap, coaxing her to sleep with slow strokes of his hand down her back. And that had been because of some goons with a grudge against her father who had accosted her, getting a few good shots in despite the fact that her ability to turn anything into a weapon, along with her general scrappiness, had foiled their plan to nab her and hold her for some kind of ransom._

_Honestly, at the time she’d been more exasperated, wondering why people still seemed to believe that Howard would have given a fuck if she’d been taken, but for Rhodey, it had been the first time in their friendship that he’d been dosed with the reality of what her life was like. His way of dealing with it had been simple; rant endlessly about Howard and his fucking no-ransom policy, and his fucked-up idea of parenting, and when he’d run out of steam about that, fret and mother Toni in a way that only Jarvis had ever bothered to do for her before. That night had been a little more about Rhodey than her, which was part of the reason she’d consented to being patched up with painstaking gentleness and subsequently guarded like a delicate princess for a week afterward._

_This experience though… even as she slid into awareness, she knew right off the bat that it was different._

_For one, her pillow wasn’t the hard angles of Rhodey’s knee, but something soft, yet firm, and incredibly warm. For another, the warmth wasn’t limited to the blanket that was haphazardly tangled around her middle, but stretched out along her entire body, cocooning her in it._

_And for that matter, there was a rather large restraint banded around her middle that was pinning her to another soft, firm, warm thing._

_It barely took half a second before she realized that she was in a totally unfamiliar bed, but spooned back into a very familiar body. One that she’d flown with too many times not to recognize who she was pressed up against._

_What was she doing spooning with Steve? In what was presumably his bed?_

_Slowly, the memories of the night before filtered into her mind. They had been celebrating Steve’s birthday and Thor had brought Asgardian mead in an attempt to waylay the serum’s increased metabolic properties long enough to get their good Captain drunk._

_Amazingly, or alarmingly depending on who you asked, it had worked._

_For the first time since possibly ever, Toni had been the unofficial sober friend, unwilling as she was to lose control over her faculties by drinking alcohol that was unfamiliar to her. The rest of the team had exercised no such qualms, getting hilariously hammered until they’d either passed out, or been gently escorted back to their rooms by an amused but indulgent Toni. She had to admit, it was a rather refreshing change to be the one caring, rather than being cared for, not to mention how nice it was to wake up without a hangover._

_Steve had been the last to fall; still an honorable achievement when one considered Thor had been drinking the mead for centuries before the super soldier; and Toni had been unable to shake him off at his bed like she had the others. Instead, he had aimed impossibly blue eyes at her, wide and adorable in a way that should have come with a warning label, and asked her softly to stay with him, just for tonight, as a birthday gift._

_Graciously, Toni hadn’t reminded him of the copious amounts of art supplies she’d gotten for him as her present, along with turning one of the floors into a bona fide studio for him. Instead, she’d folded like a cheap suitcase._

_And who could blame her? She’d have liked to see anyone deny those eyes anything._

_So she’d lain on the bed against the headboard, decidedly above the covers if memory served, and had put her fingers through his hair in a way she knew he loved. Steve had all but purred in happiness, starting to mumble a few moments later about a birthday he’d had when he was younger, with his mother and Bucky, and how it was one of his favourite memories._

_Then, he’d eased the heartache he hadn’t known he was causing by saying that this birthday was going to be another favourite memory for him._

_Unable to help herself, Toni had drawn him into a loose hug, surrendering when his response had been to drag her down the bed and cuddle her like a favoured teddy bear. She distinctly recalled her own decision to wait until his breathing had petered out before sneaking away…_

_…but apparently, a warm and snuggly Steve Rogers had been enough to send her into sleep before she could._

_She wasn’t sure what part of the night – or morning – had resulted in her finding her way underneath the covers, with Steve wrapped around her like an octopus, but damn if it wasn’t comfortable. She thought she should have been freaking out a little, given that their legs were tangled loosely together and they were pressed so close that a paper wouldn’t fit between them, but Steve’s heart was beating rhythmically against her back, and deep, measured breaths were puffing against the back of her neck in a manner that spoke of a restful sleep that neither of them usually had, so Toni was loathe to do as much as tense. She didn’t want to wake him up, not now when he was getting a good sleep without the nightmares that haunted him as much as they did, her._

_“Stop it.”_

_The voice, low and rough, made her shiver involuntarily, but the uncharacteristic grumble in them made her grin despite herself. “Stop what?” she murmured softly, despite the fact that Steve was clearly awake._

_“Thinking.” Steve huffed the word out, the breath against her neck and the petulant tenor of his voice teaming up to make her unsuccessfully bite down a quiet laugh. Rather than pull away or apologize profusely for the close proximity, as Toni had expected from her best friend and his 40s sensibilities, Steve only shuffled closer and pulled her tighter against him. His leg slipped more firmly between hers and dragged slowly down her calf as he stretched slightly, before he cuddled her in closer and tucked his head in the space between her neck and shoulder. “Sleep more.”_

_His short answers should have been funny; would have been funny; if Toni wasn’t suddenly struggling to breathe. It wasn’t panic, or even physical discomfort, but something else entirely that stole the breath from her lungs as she was wrapped securely in her best friend’s arms, surrounded and safe and secure._

_She swallowed twice, but the feeling wouldn’t go away, and she started to consider scrambling away as her pulse began to jackrabbit. Before she could, however, Steve turned his head and brushed his lips against the cusp of her shoulder._

_And okay, it wasn’t unusual for Steve to drop little kisses on her – gentle little ones on her forehead before she turned in for the night after a binge in the workshop, fluttered against her temple when she’d had a close call and he was pulling her into a hug of relief, brushed over her knuckles when they were both awake with nightmares and their solution was to get JARVIS to play some music as he pulled her into a dance – but this one felt so inherently different. There was a soft and casual intimacy there that didn’t feel out of place, but… shouldn’t it have?_

_Before she could chew too long on that question, Steve’s voice cut through her thoughts again._

_“Sleep, sweetheart,” he rumbled softly, and it wasn’t the first time he’d called her that, or some other little endearment either, but in that moment, it made her heart squeeze in her chest._

_Without her permission, her muscles relaxed, and Toni found herself pushing her head a little further up Steve’s bicep (so, that was her pillow) in order to give him space to rest his head along the curve of her neck. He accepted the unspoken invitation with a pleased little hum, and within moments, was breathing slow and even as he dropped off again._

_But not Toni. Because she wanted to relish the feeling of being wrapped up in Steve for a little longer before the cold light of day forced her away. Again, out of necessity, not choice._

_And in that moment, pinned to the bed with no desire to be anywhere else in the entire world, Toni Stark knew that she was in love in Steve Rogers._

 

It wasn’t like things had fallen seamlessly into place after her terrifying little epiphany. In fact, it was quite the opposite, although Toni maintained that it was as much Steve’s fault as it was her own. For roughly ten weeks after that morning, they’d danced around each other, Toni spending more and more hours in the workshop to avoid spending too much time with him, and Steve retaliating by making sure that they barely even crossed paths with each in the tower. 

And as it was wont to do, it all came together with a few explosives. 

 

_Dread pooled low in Toni’s stomach as she caught sight of something on her HUD that she’d so hoped never to see again._

_A bomb. Judging from its energy signature, a hot one._

_The building, thank God for small blessings, had already been evacuated at the start of the battle with the HYDRA battalion that had been sent in to capture Steve; apparently, dead or alive wasn’t much of a distinction for the assholes anymore. The only problem was that the timer was ticking down; t-minus three minutes and counting; and Toni was caught between a rock and Captain America. Steve would definitely come bursting in if he knew there was a bomb here, which she couldn’t let happen, but at the same time, she couldn’t say the building was clear and risk civilians reentering._

_So, Plan G, then._

_“Nat?” She had JARVIS patch her into the Black Widow through a secure, separate line, and perhaps it was her short tone, or the fact that she was using the former assassin’s real name rather than her code name, but the redhead caught on immediately to the urgency of the situation._

_“Toni, what’s wrong?” she demanded, voice low and tense._

_Exhaling shakily, the genius began her cautious walk towards the bomb, forcing herself to take easy, gentle footsteps, knowing firsthand just how fragile the things were. She had, after all, grown up in weaponry. “I have a situation here,” she reported succinctly. “HYDRA rigged an explosive that looks like it could take out about half the block. I’m going to try to disarm it, but I need you to clear the rest of the team out of the danger zone.”_

_Out of everyone, Toni knew that Natasha was the only one she could count on to listen to her, rather than be stunted by the knee-jerk, emotional, all-for-one and one-for-all shtick that they all seemed to be embracing. That wasn’t at all to say that the other woman didn’t care deeply for her; in fact, Toni might have even went out on a limb and guessed that Nat saw her as a sister of sorts, as Toni did her; but it had more to do with the fact that the redhead agent knew a lot more intimately than anyone else, just how much of an expert she was in munitions. Toni tried to hide it, tried to deflect from it, especially since she’d become Iron Woman, and most of the time she was remarkably successful, but Romanoff? She had seen more of what Toni was capable of in her time at SI than most people would ever see. She’d seen some of the patents, both rejected and forfeited, and maybe even caught a glimpse into the vault of files that Toni deliberately kept unfinished and in a veritable fortress of security, but more than that, she knew because she’d seen firsthand the destruction that had been inadvertently caused at Toni’s hand._

_They shared some of the same monsters._

_Toni had the best chance of anyone to diffuse the bomb. But not if she was worried about her teammates’ safety while doing so._

_“Copy that,” Nat replied after an excruciating minute, and underneath the cool, professional tone, Toni heard the cracks of anguish. She was going to owe the redhead big time after this; and might even apologize if she survived it._

_Toni took a fortifying breath as she stepped out of the suit. “Thanks, Nat,” she muttered, before fixing her attention on the device in front of her._

_As far as devices went, this one was completely hideous. Wiring stuck out from odd places and the timer was hanging on by a thread; literally, there was only a piece of duct tape keeping it attached._

_“C’mon, ever heard of taking pride in your work?” Toni chided no one in particular, brow furrowing slightly because on a professional level, this kind of workmanship was just shoddy. She could have built better at thirteen. It was a disgrace. HYDRA should be ashamed of themselves._

_“Toni!”_

_The frantic call of her name came, no surprise, from Cap himself, and Toni spared a moment to wince in sympathy for Nat. She’d keep Steve back, no doubt, but it would be an enormous task. Perhaps some flowers were in order. Or some custom knives. Yup, that was the ticket._

_Toni licked her dry lips, not halting her slow but steady progress across the room to the bomb. “Right here, Steven, no need to shout.”_

_“Toni, you get out of there right now, or I swear to God,” Steve snarled, apparently not in the mood for light-hearted banter._

_Though she instinctively bristled at the authoritative words, Toni heard the blatant undercurrent of fear in his tone and kindly decided not to rise to the bait. “No can do, Captain Cupcake,” she made herself quip, but even to her own ears, there was a hint of anticipation lacing her voice. “This thing’s gonna take out a small chunk of real estate in roughly,” she flicked her eyes briefly to the timer, “one minute, thirty-nine seconds. I’m pretty sure I spotted some kind of pressure-release in my slow-motion trip over here, so moving the bomb or myself is actually a riskier option than trying to diffuse it.” Heart slamming into her rib-cage, she dropped to her knees in front of the device, keen eyes scanning the components that were still familiar to her after all these years._

_She heard the sounds of scuffling over the comms – “Get the fuck off me, I’m going to Toni, you guys stay clea- No! Thor! Let me go, goddamnit!” – and her heart broke in her chest as she heard the clear anguish in Steve’s voice. She hadn’t meant for them to know; had hoped that Nat would be able to clear the rest of the team with them none the wiser; but she should have known better. Should have known that Steve wouldn’t simply accept the absence of one of his teammates, leave alone his best friend._

_Forcing herself to block out the heart-wrenching sounds, she lifted her hands, grimly satisfied that they were as rock steady as they always were when she was doing something like this, despite the adrenaline surging through her veins. Nimble fingers slipped through the confusion of wires and triggers, delicate and graceful yet strong and clever, and before she hit the minute mark, she’d already disconnected the pressure release._

_One down, two to go._

_The remote detonation connection had to be the next to go, because it would be pointless to diffuse the bomb only for it to be manually triggered by one of HYDRA’s lackeys when the time frame passed with no big boom. That one was actually easier than the pressure release, because she could move her fingers without worrying about brushing them against the other plates and wires, and Toni made quick work of short-circuiting the connection and scrambling the signal with a little fancy improv as she rerouted some of the arc’s power into the device through one of the wires._

_“Nearly there,” she reported tensely, when she realized that Steve was still cussing a blue streak. A quick glance told her that she had under thirty seconds to disconnect the wires from the kill-switch; their last resort; and perform the actual detonation._

_No pressure, then._

_Steve’s voice, which had cut out with her update, came back on to the comms, ragged and trembling with what she suspected was fury. “You better be, or I’ll…”_

_“Kill me?” she guessed cheekily, wanting more than anything not to hear Steve absolutely lacing into the team because they were keeping him and themselves safe at her behest. “Seems rather counter-intuitive, doesn’t it, darling?”_

_“Not gonna kill you,” Steve replied shortly, obviously indulging her but Toni would take what she could get. “I’ll convince SHIELD to let Hammer outfit the Avengers from now on.”_

_Even through her relief at disconnecting the kill-switch (only one thing to go, just one, and twelve seconds on the clock) Toni couldn’t help the little sound of horror that escaped her throat. “Hammer Tech?!” she bit out viciously, not bothering to hide her disdain and betrayal as steady hands maneuvered the last of the wires out from behind the main plate. “Why would you even joke about something like that, you fucking heathen?! Thor, you’re back to being my favourite.”_

_“And it is an honor to behold, milady,” Thor rumbled, amused but reserved as the tension of the situation still loomed over them._

_Confidence that could only come from years of experience prevented Toni from doing anything like trying to convey last words or sentiments. Instead, she simply removed the Swiss army knife that she always kept on her person and sliced through the detonation wire without fanfare or preamble._

_It wasn’t a surprise that she was right, but when she glanced at the timer and saw the single figure four flicker sluggishly into darkness, she couldn’t deny herself an inaudible breath of relief._

_“Well,” she chirped brightly, standing up. “That was fun.”_

_She was met with varying responses, from Thor’s triumphant laughter to Clint’s good-natured cursing, but Steve’s voice was notably not among them. Toni knew she was going to be in trouble after the debrief, so armed with a handy excuse, she relayed her intention to take the bomb back to her workshop for complete deconstruction, just in case. When Nat was the one to answer with a quick but warm, “Affirmative,” Toni knew that the trouble would be significant._

_That said, she hadn’t expected Steve to skip the debrief himself and be waiting, face set in stone, on her dissembling walkway for her._

_“How mad do you think he is, J?” she asked in a low mutter as she landed on the platform._

_JARVIS was silent for a moment, before offering his answer in a dry tone. “At an educated guess, I would say… Apoplectic, Madam.”_

_“Smartass,” Toni sighed resignedly as she began to walk to her execution, suit melting away with the walkway’s gentle motions. “Before you say anything,” she started, but was cut off abruptly when Steve turned on his heel and walked into the tower without a word. “Ouch,” she mumbled to herself, less angry at the action and more remorseful, and she carefully set the now-harmless device out on the balcony before following him in._

_Time to face the firing squad._

_“Okay, in my defense…”_

_“No.” Steve snapped the word out, his voice so livid that it actually stopped Toni from speaking. “You don’t have a defense, because what you did was inexcusable. It was reckless and it was dangerous and it was… fuck, Toni! Do you have any idea…”_

_“What would you rather have had me do?” she asked acerbically, his little rant giving her time to get her back up. “Let the thing go off? Let hundreds of people lose their homes? Or better yet, let you guys join me so we’d all have the chance to die today?”_

_Something in the words triggered a response in him, because suddenly, Steve was rounding on her. “That’s another thing!” he spat. “You don’t have the authority – hell, you don’t have the **right** to go over my head and get Natasha to corral me into the clear while you were diffusing a goddamn bomb!”_

_“The right?!” she scoffed, trying to fit as much derision and incredulity into her tone as she could. “Listen to yourself, Steve! I have every fucking right to keep my team safe, just the same as you do! There was nothing you could have do-…”_

_“I could have been with you!” Steve bellowed, and him shouting was such an uncommon thing that Toni jerked slightly in response._

_Not that a little shouting was ever enough to turn her away from a fight, especially when it looked like the Captain was gunning for one._

_“Yeah?” She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow and deliberately looking as cool and superior as she could to get a rise out of him. “And just what would that have accomplished, Rogers? Because let me tell you, I think it makes a whole lot more sense to risk one team member rather than two, especially if that one is just…”_

_Her words died out in her throat as Steve suddenly crossed the distance between them, crowding her back against the bar and slamming his hands furiously on the counter at either side of her hips. The sound echoed loudly in the otherwise still room, an ominous creaking underneath it that made Toni idly question whether Steve had just broken the entire bar top, but she couldn’t find her voice long enough to speak, especially when she was faced with stormy, dark blue eyes that held more torment than anger._

_“For the sake of my sanity,” he growled, low and deep, “don’t you dare finish that sentence. Don’t you dare say what I think you were about to say, because if you say anything that even hints at you being expendable, I might actually lose my fucking mind.”_

_“Because you haven’t already?” Toni tried to shoot back, but her voice was a shade too breathless and her tone was just on the wrong side of trembling to be taken seriously. It was as if his anger was emanating off him in waves, because Toni felt the heat coming off Steve like he was a human furnace. Or was that simply because he was half a millimeter away from physically pinning her against the counter?_

_Steve barked out a laugh, but it sounded all wrong. It was bitter and raw and nothing like that bright, happy sound that perked up her whole day. “No, you’re right,” he nodded sharply, closing that last miniscule gap and pressing his hips against hers so that she couldn’t so much as turn her head without brushing against him. “I’ve completely lost my mind, because I’m in love with the most infuriating, self-sacrificing, stubborn woman I have ever met, and if I had any shred of common sense I would handcuff her to me so that I could make sure she didn’t try to do stupid things, like keep me from being right there with her when she was trying to save the rest of the world by risking **my** whole world.”_

_If she could have thought of something to say, in that moment, Toni still wouldn’t have been able to speak through the sudden thickness in her throat._

_For his part, though, Steve didn’t seem to be interested in talking._

_Toni’s brain short-circuited as Steve claimed her lips in a gentle kiss, almost chaste in a way that belied his harsh tone and the unrelenting pin of his hips against hers. Genius or not, Toni was totally unable to process the scramble in her brain when he pulled back, not getting further than **‘yes please, again, more’** , and without thinking, she flicked her tongue over her bottom lip, chasing his taste. _

_It was enough for Steve to get the message, at least, because with a rough little growl at the back of his throat, the super soldier slammed his lips back against hers. There was no tenderness this time, only hunger and heat and an unmistakable claim as Steve plundered her mouth and swallowed every gasp and moan as soon as she made them. Toni gave as good as she got, nipping his bottom lip and then soothing it with a little swipe of her tongue, and it was around that point that Steve apparently decided that he needed to get even closer._

_Big hands dragging down her body was the only warning Toni got before Steve gripped the backs of her thighs and hauled her up on to the bar top, following the motion by immediately dragging her right back to its edge. She wouldn’t have needed the direction, but that didn’t make it any less hot when Steve yanked her impossibly closer and hitched her legs around his hips. She wrapped her legs around him and yielded to his fiercely searching mouth by baring her neck to him, letting out a breathless moan of ecstasy when he bit and suckled at the soft skin of her throat._

_She was helpless against the whine that slipped from her lips when Steve pulled away, but it was quickly silenced when he pulled her right off the counter, forcing her to tighten her legs around him even as he held her up easily with an arm slung low around her hips. She kissed him this time, a messy and uncoordinated affair as Steve carried her to the couch._

_It was a good thing, too, because there was no way Toni was going to make it to a bed._

 

All told, Toni had never been quite so grateful to HYDRA before, although she was careful not to joke about the incident for a few weeks after. Even now, Steve still got a hurt, pinched little look on his face when he thought back to the moment when he’d been unsure if she was clear, or if he was about to hear and see her die, and Toni always hated to remind him of anything that caused him pain. 

Part of her couldn’t help the gratitude, though. Steve was the best thing that had ever happened to her, until Peter, and he was still the dream come true that she could have never anticipated she would find, let alone deserve. The thought of them still pining after each other was unimaginable, especially not when she could attribute most of her fondest memories of the past few years to her super soldier. 

Running a dry tongue over chapped lips made her wince, but it also brought her out of her reminiscing long enough to wonder how much time had passed. A glance at the watch that was still on the sleeping kid told her that it had been a little over three hours since she’d sent herself into that self-imposed meditative state of remembering, and if she’d run the numbers right based on the max speed of the Quinjet… well, that meant that her team might be there by now. 

Her _Steve_ might be there. 

Tiredly, she got the suit up and running again, smiling faintly when JARVIS’ voice greeted her again. “What’s the status, buddy?”

“My sensors indicate that the Captain has arrived, along with Dr. Banner and Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS reported dutifully, although Toni could have sworn that she heard a hint of relief in his voice. “I have also received communication indicating that Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes will be arriving shortly.” 

Ah, good old Rhodey. He was gonna yell so much after this. 

Hope rekindling in her chest, Toni forced herself into a semi-upright position, the boy still dozing peacefully half across her lap. “Alright, J,” she murmured. “Patch me through, would you?”

“Post haste, Madam,” the AI replied agreeably, and Toni finally felt some of her tension drain. 

Help had arrived. 

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the flashbacks here! Hope you guys enjoyed the other dabbles and the fluff, and for those of you who were as hurt by Endgame as I was, you can count on copious amounts of fluff from me in an attempt to make things better. Also, I'm about to post another fem!Toni fic that isn't part of this verse, but has a lot of fluff if you need it! <3
> 
> J <3


	4. The Game Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the patience! My tests are over for now, so here's another nice, long chapter for you guys! I thought it would only be appropriate to update this series today ;) 
> 
> On that note, to any mothers who might be reading this, Happy Mother's Day! Y'all are all just incredible <3 
> 
> Enjoy! <3

Having lived through a war, and then the sort of battles that made war look like child’s play, it was a safe assumption to make that Steve have seen a lot of thing in his lifetime. He’d seen strife and suffering. He’d seen loss. He’d seen light, the lightest, and he’d also seen dark. So much dark. Part of what made him the immovable, reliable, steady Captain America, was his ability to see all those things and still find it in himself to stiffen his spine and keep going. It got under his skin, of course, but he never let it show. That was the burden that came with being a hero; a leader; an icon of bravery and a symbol of hope. 

But that was Captain America. Steve Rogers, on the other hand, felt things all the way through to his soul. 

Toni was pretty much the only person in the entire world who never, at any point, mixed Steve Rogers with Captain America; was the only person in the entire world who knew exactly when to reach a hand out to the former in order to give the latter the strength to be everything the world thought he effortlessly was. Steve wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to do it without her, this time.

In that moment, as he watched the grainy, haphazard footage shot from a cellphone by a man who deemed it more important to document suffering than help prevent it, he had never struggled so much to be Captain America over Steve Rogers. Because the screen was showing the love of his life shooting into a building mere moments before the entire structure crumbled, burying her underneath it. 

Through sheer force of will, he kept from smashing the little device, instead forcing himself to take deep breaths lest he start hyperventilating again. A small part of him couldn’t help wishing for Toni, desperate in a way that only a lover could be, and he knew he would have given just about anything in the world if he could just get to her, quick and easy. Or better yet, have it not happen at all. 

Distantly, he heard Pepper’s voice, asking him what they needed to do, if there was anything she could do, and then Bucky’s voice was joining hers, trying to urge him out of an inaction that he wasn’t totally aware he’d fallen into. Before he could figure out how to answer them, remember how to be the steady Captain instead of the terrified lover, a voice came over the comms. 

**“Darling, we have to stop meeting like this.”**

Judging from the grin and chuckle from Bruce and Bucky respectively, Toni wasn’t on a private comm line with him, but none of that mattered to Steve because she was there, inexplicably and impossibly, and just the sound of her voice was enough to bring him back. 

He managed the barest hint of a smile and handed the phone off, undamaged, to Pepper, while Bruce explained to her how Toni had gotten in contact with them. He saw relief and hope take the place of the anguish that was previously dominant on the woman’s face as she fought back tears. 

Steve’s attention was solely on his genius. “Really? Here I was thinking I was being romantic,” he teased back softly, finding his feet with their normal banter. 

**“I’ll give you points for the charming company and the way you fill out any goddamn thing you wear,”** she quipped back, somehow managing to stretch some playful flirtiness over what Steve could identify all too clearly as fatigue and pain. **“But that’s it. The only way we can salvage this date is if you have your wicked way with me when we get home.”**

Steve choked a little on a sound that was half a laugh and half a splutter. Having heard Toni speak to the kid, all fluent, sexy Spanish, he was pretty sure that the child didn’t speak English, but his Ma had always said that little pitchers had big ears. Granted, she had always been referring to him when she said it, but that was beside the point. 

Before he could make a response, Bucky was intervening. “Hey, c’mon, you guys know the rules,” he mock complained. “No flirting between Mom and Dad while we’re on the group comms.”

**“Don’t sass Mama, James Buchanan, we raised you better than that.”**

“I hate to be the responsible adult among us,” Bruce cut in dryly, the implication that he always was, sitting heavily in his tone as Steve and Bucky exchanged grins, “but shouldn’t we at least pretend to be strategizing? Just for the sake of our reputation?”

“Well, for the sake of that, and for the safety of my best friend.” Overhead, the mechanized voice of Lieutenant Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes drifted over them, sounding distinctly unimpressed in a way that raised Steve’s hackles. Although, to be fair, there was plenty about the man himself that did that anyway, mostly because of the rocky footing they always seemed to be on. 

But no matter what was between him and Rhodes, Toni was still the common thread between them. 

As if to prove that point, Toni’s voice audibly brightened. **“Honeybear!”** And no, that definitely wasn’t a pulse of huffy jealousy that Steve was feeling. **“You made it! Now, before you yell at me…”**

“ _Yell_ at you? Why would I yell at you?” Rhodes deadpanned. “Couldn’t be that you got yourself trapped under a decimated building because you thought you could out-speed a fucking earthquake. You’re not that reckless and stupid.”

**“Now, Sourpatch,”** Toni started reasonably, while Steve fought not to bristle at the harsh words against his girlfriend, **“you know that I hate when you use the word decimated. It implies that the building is in ten pieces, when we both know it’s more than that.”**

Judging from the look on the Colonel’s face as he drew back his faceplate with a dull _‘clang’,_ this wasn’t the first time that Toni had pointed out that obscure grammatical error, and he knew very well that he was using it wrong now. It was common knowledge that the pair frequently pretended to bicker, in a vaguely sibling-esque manner, but this was probably the first time that Steve blatantly saw Rhodes being the one to rock the ship. 

Case in point. “Decimated,” Rhodes bit off pointedly. “Decimated, decimated, decimated, deci-”

**“Winter break, freshman year.”**

Whatever Toni meant by that reference, it stopped the Colonel’s pointed repetition of the word in its tracks. “That’s cold,” the man commented, but there was a flicker of a smile on his face that told a story of the smothering relief he was masking, the same kind that Steve had felt when he’d first heard her voice on the Quinjet. Maybe a little less, though, because Steve was pretty sure he loved Toni more than anybody. “You know I’m still gonna yell at you when we get you out, right?”

**“Get me outta here and I’ll take all the yelling and then some,”** she replied, and Steve heard the slightest hitch in her tone that she tried to mask from them. He’d known, on some deep and intrinsic level, that she’d been playing it down when she denied being badly hurt, but he hoped to God that it wasn’t as bad as his mind was suggesting. From what he could see, extraction wasn’t going to be a simple process, and certainly not a quick one. 

Though Rhodes had to have come to the same conclusion, he didn’t seem eager to tell Toni as much. “I got you, kid,” he said instead, and it rankled Steve equally that he was offering platitudes like Toni couldn’t handle the truth when she was stronger than any of them combined, and also that, well, he was offering platitudes. Offering comfort. Which Steve could have done himself, thankyouverymuch. 

It probably wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone that Jim and Steve didn’t really get along. 

Well, except to Toni. She’d actually been convinced that they would get on like a house on fire, what with them both being staunch military men with a strict moral code and a tendency to reproach her disrespect for authority; and of course, Steve was paraphrasing his charming lover, just a bit. What she hadn’t taken into account, however, was how possessive both of them also were, and in particular possessive over her. Although in fairness, he and Toni hadn’t even been an official item at the time that Rhodes and Steve had met, so it was rather understandable that the genius hadn’t accounted for him...

 

_Careful fingers smudged the black lead pencil on the page until Steve was perfectly satisfied with the shaded accents of Natasha’s hair._

_He was sketching the team from his place on the window seat, enjoying the natural light and the scene before him as the rest of the Avengers lounged together and simply relaxed. It was rare that they got to do this; have a day off, and then rarer still, have the chance to spend it together without Toni having upgrades to finish or Bruce busy with lab work or whatever; so they were all taking the chance to just be together. Thor and Bruce shared the 3-seater, the former watching something on TV while the latter was immersed in a book. Clint was laid out across the top of the same couch and alternating between watching TV and throwing a ball in the air and catching it. Nat was curled up in the single armchair, also with a book, and Toni was on the love-seat doing some work on a StarkPad that Steve would bet was another design idea for a weapon for the team. She’d been the easiest and the most difficult of his teammates to draw; easiest, because Steve found himself drawing Toni so often that it was practically muscle memory for his fingers, and most difficult because there were so many nuances to Toni Stark that it was virtually impossible for him to stop coming back to her and changing a line here, or the shading there, to reflect those beautiful features and the enigmatic depths within them just a little better._

_Speaking of which, she was doing that thing now, where she dragged a finger over her bottom lip, a sure sign that she was deep in thought and solving a problem. Maybe Steve should incorporate that…_

_“Madam,” JARVIS’ voice overhead interrupted the relative silence. “It would appear that you have a guest.” The AI, and it was astounding that this was even possible, actually sounded pleased and indulgent, almost, as though presenting a surprise for his creator._

_Steve shifted his eyes back to Toni, who was glancing between them in puzzlement. “Don’t look at me,” she shrugged, clearly as intrigued as them. “I didn’t know I was expecting someone.”_

_“You weren’t,” a new voice, deep and amused, came over the air. Toni scrambled to her feet, eyes wide with disbelief and such sheer happiness that it made Steve’s chest warm without thought. They all looked towards the elevator, from where the voice had materialized, but Toni was the only one who gave a choked sound between a laugh and a gasp._

_She was across the room in a streak of color and barreling into the tall man at full speed. “Rhodey!” she practically shrieked in excitement, fairly leaping into his arms. The man seemed used to it, stepping back with her momentum but grabbing her around the waist and catching her close against him. For a few seconds, they simply stayed like that, Toni dangling in the air while the stranger held her close._

_Steve hated it._

_Abruptly, he stood, his instincts prickling with mistrust; well, probably mistrust, it was more or less just an unpleasant burning sensation in his chest that tasted like jealousy, but that was ridiculous because he obviously wasn’t jealous. He was concerned, as leader of the team and as Toni’s best friend, because he didn’t know anything about this man and he wasn’t about to let him much closer to the team until Steve was sure he could be trusted._

_“When did you get back?” Toni demanded, and was set back on her feet with the man’s steadying arm staying around her waist. “I thought you were still on a mission? How long are you here for? Do you have to go back soon? Can’t you tell them to go away?”_

_Her questions were halted in place as the man chuckled and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “I got back early this morning,” he answered, while Steve was busy bristling at the familiarity and the liberties he was taking with Steve’s Ton- teammate. His teammate. “I thought I’d surprise you. I’m off for the next two weeks and I thought I’d make use of that apartment of mine while I’m stateside.”_

_“Make use of the apartment,” Toni laughed, but the sound held an undertone of tears. She burrowed her head into the man’s chest with another hug before Steve could see. “Please make use of the apartment.”_

_The two kept hugging, and might have continued to do so (rude) if Steve hadn’t cleared his throat and walked forward. As if the sound reminded the genius of the rest of the room’s occupants, Toni suddenly whirled back around, smiling brightly but staying in the man’s arms. Steve categorically did not suppress a huff or irritation at that._

_“Introductions, honeybear!” Toni tugged on the man’s arm so that they were further into the room and proceeded to introduce everyone by name, giving the man a brief rundown on them all while Steve bit back a scowl at the pet name. “…and of course, I’m sure you know who this is,” Toni’s teasing voice cut through Steve’s irritation, making it melt away as the genius grinned at him. “Captain Steve Rogers. He’s pretty much got the role of fearless leader down pat, and I’m not just saying that out of best friend obligations. Guys, this is Lieutenant Colonel James Rupert Rhodes of the United States Air Force.” Pride lined Toni’s features, clear as day as she gave the man’s full title. The glow from his introduction dimmed bit by bit, the longer her adoring gaze was on Rhodes instead of Steve. “I met him when we were in MIT and for some reason, he’s stuck with me ever since.”_

_The team called out various forms of greetings, friendly in a way that made him realize he was the only one harboring suspicion. That would have been fine, except that Toni was shooting him a look that was unconsciously hopeful. The inventor so rarely had any hopes or expectations from the people around her that it made Steve want to give her anything and everything she asked for when she did ask for it. That meant, right now, playing nice with the touchy-feely Lt. Col._

_Cordially, Steve stepped forward and offered a hand to the man. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he offered, fixing a smile on his face, and it was worth the effort when Toni beamed at him. “I’ve heard a lot.”_

_“Funny, I haven’t heard much at all,” Rhodes replied coolly, shaking Steve’s hand just a shade too firmly, but there was a hard answering smile on his face that looked a little like he was trying not to snarl instead._

_Either oblivious to the tension or eager to discard it, Toni smoothly replied before Steve could. “That’s because you never call, sugarplum, and you certainly never write,” she playfully complained, sending the man an exaggerated pout. For his part, Rhodes’ expression turned completely soft and fond as he looked down at her. “You just abandon me to go off and save the world, not caring that I’m practically sick with worry every second awaiting your return…”_

_“Alright, okay,” the man cut her off with a laugh. “You’ve made your point, Drama Queen. Have you eaten yet? Because I’m starving and I’ve been thinking about nothing except that Italian joint on eighth since I got back.”_

_Toni, who had already been catapulted into motion as soon as Rhodes said the word ‘starving’, nodded agreeably as she waited, presumably for the elevator. “I’ll take your stuff up, since your apartment’s closest to mine, and change really quickly. Hey, J, think you can call ahead and get our usual booth for us?” JARVIS’ answer was cut off midway as the elevator door closed behind Toni, but Steve was rather more focused on the admittedly impressive Lt. Col. The man was sizing him up as well, the rest of the team going back to their activities, if one ignored the conspicuously exchanged glances with each other and the way their eyes ever so often flicked towards the pair._

_Traitors._

_“So…” Steve started, a little awkwardly, trying to at least be amicable for Toni’s sake. “Have you and Toni bee-“_

_“Yeah, no,” Rhodes shook his head, all pretenses of friendliness gone now. “We’re not doing that.” He crossed his arms over his expansive chest, mouth flattened into a thin line as he regarded Steve with blatant mistrust. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing with her, but it’s gonna stop right the fuck here.”_

_Steve felt himself shift, mirroring the restrained aggression of the other man’s posture. “Excuse me?” he asked dangerously, temper flaring brightly at the insinuation that this man had any influence over what Steve and Toni did and didn’t have._

_“You heard me,” the military man bit off coldly, taking a threatening step closer. Steve pointedly didn’t move a muscle. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, here, or what plan you’re running, but you can just stay the fuck away from Toni. She’s had enough of people like you her entire life.”_

_“Just what is that supposed to mean?” Steve snarled, heat flooding his veins with righteous indignation. He wasn’t playing any goddamn game, and he wouldn’t ever hurt Toni, and not even Rhodes had the right to assume he would._

_A sneer came over the man’s face as he repeated words that still struck guilt into Steve’s heart. “’Hotshot in a suit of armor, take that away and what are you?’ That ringing any bells for you, Soldier? How about my personal favourite, ‘I know men with none of that worth twelve of you’?” Rhodes’ eyes were flat with fury, not seeming to care that the reminder of the words had made Steve literally flinch. “The whole world is full of people who want to rake her over the coals just because she’s everyone’s convenient target, and I’m not going to let you stand here and be one of them, while pretending to give a fuck about her.”_

_Though the words had sent him reeling, that accusation was one that Steve simply couldn’t let stand, not least of all because it had taken him so long to build his friendship with Toni and convince her that he did care about her. That he did see past the armor she wore like a second skin._

_“You don’t know anything about me, Rhodes,” Steve growled, fists clenched as he willed himself not to use them. “And I don’t need to justify myself to you, but I more than give a fuck about Toni. She’s my teammate and she’s my best friend and I love her. Whether you believe me or not is, quite frankly, not my fucking problem, but if you try to convince her otherwise and get her upset then you and I are gonna go a few rounds.” Blue eyes narrowed with dark intent, he added, “I’m not gonna let you come in here and destroy all the progress we’ve made because I protect what’s mine. And Toni **is** mine.”_

_The other man scoffed derisively, only serving to raise Steve’s hackles more. “That so?” he drawled with a surety of himself that Steve instantly despised. “Because let me tell you, Soldier, Toni has been mine to protect since she was 14 fucking years old, and that ain’t changing any time soon. Not even for Captain America.”_

_Before Steve could attempt to snap something back, or maybe give into his impulses and knock the other man the fuck out, Toni was back and chattering animatedly as she wriggled into a leather jacket. Rhodes, the bastard, did a complete 180 and got all soft and teasing with Toni again, leading her back into the elevator and very pointedly pulling the genius snugly against his side with a smirk at Steve as the doors closed. For a moment, all the super soldier could do was fume silently, battling rage and a little bit of nauseating anticipation, because what if Rhodes could actually do that? Convince Toni that he was playing some sort of angle, ruin the best thing he’d had since waking up from the ice?_

_He couldn’t. Steve wouldn’t give him the chance. He’d stick to the pair like glue for the next two weeks, if that was what it took._

_Sullenly, Steve went back to his drawing, but it barely took ninety seconds before he was throwing his pencil down in frustration and heading to the gym instead._

_The picture wasn’t right anymore, without Toni there to complete it._

 

Things had, of course, gotten better. When Rhodes had realized that Steve was as crazily in love with Toni as one person could be with another, and when Steve had realized just how many awful and sickening things the man had seen Toni through and protected her from as far as possible, the military men reached an understanding. Toni was their common thread and the one person in the world that they would fight heaven and hell for. They would always be suspicious of each other and step on each other’s toes more often than not, but for the most part, they teamed up tentatively to take care of Toni. 

Which was what they needed to do right now. 

Before Rhodes could offer anything else by way of comfort, Steve stepped in. “You got it, sweetheart,” he murmured in response to her small plea to get her out. “And we got you, okay?” Then, softer, “I got you, doll.”

**“I know you do,”** came the soft reply, free of her usual snark as Toni, probably for the first time, allowed herself to let go of her front. She’d kept it up for them, Steve knew, because it was her rock solid steadiness that always reminded them at the best and worst of times that they had someone else to count on. Now, they had to let her count on them. 

“JARVIS?” Bruce addressed the AI that somehow permanently tuned into their entire comm unit. When the crisp British voice answered, the scientist continued. “Can you scan the wreckage? Use Toni and the kid’s heat signatures and maybe some echo imaging to get an idea of where we’re looking for her?”

**“Already did.”** But the answer didn’t come from the AI; it came from Toni. Which, really, shouldn’t have even surprised him. **“The echo images aren’t going to be much help since we can’t pinpoint which beams and supports are most likely to crumble or cause a secondary collapse. The best I can do is give you a general location, and then…”**

Steve fought down the feeling that he wasn’t going to like the answer. “Then what, darling?”

**“Well,”** Toni hedged, **“do you remember when Peter got sick a couple months ago and we spent all afternoon playing games with him?”**

“Toni…”

At the warning intonation, his girlfriend huffed a small, sheepish sigh. **“Well, honey, do you remember the rules of Pick-Up-Sticks?”**

Fuck. Steve had known that he wasn’t going to like the plan. 

 

###

 

If someone had told an eighteen-year-old James Rhodes that the drunk kid he’d met at a frat party and saved from being roofied was going to become the most important woman in his life next to his Momma and someday, his wife, he would have probably laughed them off and promptly directed them to the closest sanitarium. 

As it were, at the time, his only thoughts had been a near constant loop of _“What the fuck is a tween doing at a college frat party?”_ and _“Fuck, I’m gonna kill that Stone guy, I swear to God.”_ He had never been one of those guys who stood back and watched as some entitled, arrogant, pompous jerk took whatever extreme measures he so fucking desired because he believed that the entire world should bow down to his wishes. He had also never been the guy to walk away from someone in trouble, and so in a way, that first meeting of his and Toni’s was one that couldn’t have gone any other way. He’d knocked out the guy she was with, and when she’d begun to scream and yell at him for it, he’d simply tossed her over his shoulder and made the quick walk to his dorm.

Pissed as he may have been, Rhodes wasn’t about to leave the obviously stoned girl with those sleazebags. 

At the dorm room, he’d tossed her, albeit gently, on to his couch and was about to lace into her about how irresponsible it was to sneak off to college parties and drink and carry on with guys like that, when he got a proper look at her. 

It wasn’t recognition of who she was that had stopped him in his tracks; it was recognition of the way she almost imperceptibly flinched as soon as he rounded on her. 

His voice had caught in his throat and suddenly, his anger had taken a backseat to the protective concern that swamped him. She was a fighter – he could tell from the way she straightened her back and faced him head on despite how crappy and scared she must have been – but for some reason, Rhodes had felt an innate desire to step in front of whatever and whoever she was fighting. 

So instead of yelling at her, he’d stripped off his MIT hoodie and threw it around her shoulders before settling on the couch next to her and asking her what she was doing there. Warily, she’d explained that she was a student, and in stops and starts over the following two hours, Rhodes got the rundown on Toni Stark, girl genius. 

And then for the rest of the night, after she’d fallen asleep and unconsciously curled into his warmth like a kitten starved for affection, he’d gotten the rundown on Toni. Just Toni. 

The rest, as they say, was history. Rhodes had developed an inexplicable bond with the young Stark and in turn, she’d begun to tentatively learn how to lean on someone other than herself. He protected her as best he could and took on the role of an older brother with the way he was constantly looking out for her. The common misconception had always been, though, that the relationship was a one-way thing. What many people didn’t realize was that big brothers needed little sisters just as much, and in keeping with the metaphor, Rhodes needed Toni more than anyone could immediately see. 

To be fair, he hadn’t realized it himself either; at least not at first. But then, the chips went down and push came to shove and all those other metaphorical things happened, and Rhodes was forced to face just how much of a two-way street their relationship was…

 

_“Rhodeybear, you here?”_

_Pursing his lips, Rhodes continued to pack haphazardly instead of bothering to shout out an answer to Toni. She was just going to barge through the place anyway, looking for him, no need to make it easier on the little brat._

_Sure enough, a few moments later, his bedroom door was flung open. “Sugarplum!” Toni said enthusiastically by way of greeting, marching in without invitation and making herself at home on his bed. She completely disregarded the duffel he was busy filling. “You know what drives me up a goddamn wall? I’m supposed to be taking over SI in a few years, but Howard is just completely dismissive of every single one of my ideas! He keeps doing that thing where he scoffs and scorns and patronizes me until…”_

_“You know, Toni,” Rhodey interrupted, trying and failing to summon any shred of patience in his frazzled state. “I really just… I don’t really give a damn about Howard right now, or SI, or your one-woman mission to turn a weapons manufacturing company into an energy company. Can you and your daddy issues just come back another day, please?”_

_The words hadn’t even fully left his mouth yet before he was swamped with guilt. He was scared, yes; terrified, even; and he was helpless and alone and frustrated, but he’d learned a lot in recent months about just how often people tended to take swings at Toni – both literal and metaphorical – because she was there and an easy target for the people she loved. He’d vowed not to abuse her trust and love like that, and yet that was exactly what he was doing._

_She looked, all of a sudden, as small and scared as she’d looked when they’d first met, and Jim hated himself for being the cause of that. “I’m sorry, Rho- uh, James? I mean… look, I just, I’ll go now.” Stumbling on her words was something Toni only ever did when she was really crushed and it was enough to snap him out of his own inaction._

_“Stop, Tones,” he muttered uneasily, catching her around the waist as she tried to dart past him and pulling her into a hug instead. It took a few beats, but when she melted into his embrace, Rhodes allowed himself a breath of relief. “Don’t apologize. I’m the one who’s sorry, I was being a complete ass. That was completely uncalled for. Can you forgive me? Please?”_

_Toni didn’t answer so much as nod her head as she cuddled impossibly closer, but it was close enough. Smiling slightly, Jim pressed a kiss to the top of her head and went back to throwing a few more things in his duffel._

_A little more subdued now, Toni sat cross-legged on the edge of his bed. “Where are you going?” she asked softly, playing with the strap of the bag._

_“Home, for a little while,” Jim answered, clearing his throat to get rid of the sudden tightening in his throat as he thought about the phone call he’d gotten about an hour ago. “My, uh… my mom, she’s… she’s sick, and…”_

_He couldn’t keep talking, but he didn’t have to, because Toni was back in his space, this time holding his hand while aiming the most serious look at him that Jim had ever seen on the girl’s face. “You’re leaving now?” she asked, and the abrupt change in direction gave him a precious second to regain his composure._

_“An hour,” he told her, squeezing her hand once and letting it go so that he could zip the duffel and get started on the books he was going to have to take. He had gotten permission to leave but that didn’t mean he could slack off his studies. He had grades to make. “Next bus out.”_

_She nodded once and without another word, turned on her heel and left. He felt a bit displaced by her hasty exit, wishing that he could left on slightly better terms, but his mind felt like it was turning to mush with all the stressing he was doing. He wasn’t exactly sure how his family was going to afford all the tests that his mother was going to have to go for to determine the cause of her illness, not to mention what they would do if there needed to be long-term treatments. They would work it out; Rhodes would work it out, whatever he had to do; but he couldn’t help worrying. If he didn’t worry about logistics then he was going to have to worry about his mom, and he simply couldn’t stomach the idea of there being something so seriously wrong that he might… that he could…_

_“Alright, let’s roll.”_

_Jim’s head snapped up as Toni’s voice materialized again, back at the doorway. She had a bag over her shoulder that looked about half-full and still had a sleeve sticking out of it, and another small trunk next to her that Rhodes knew contained the majority of her circuit and bot-building equipment. She had her phone in her hand and was tapping away at something, looking for all the world like she’d been ready for months._

_When he could only blink at her, she seemed to realize that a bit more of an explanation was needed, and she helpfully added, “The bus is going to take too long, so I managed to sweet-talk us on to the next flight out to your folks’ place. It leaves in forty minutes and the cab is downstairs waiting to take us. Chop, chop, sugarplum.”_

_Sure. Because **that** was what he’d needed clarity on. Her urgency to leave, not the fact that **she was coming.**_

_“Tones…” He waited until he had her full attention. “What are you doing?”_

_She shifted slightly, looking uncomfortable, but when she answered, her voice was firm. “You’re the first best friend I’ve ever had, Rhodey. And yeah, I’m a genius, but I don’t always know what to do with you, or how to be the kind of best friend you are, but I do know that when I was scared, you stayed with me. All night and the next morning.” Jim knew without asking that Toni was talking about the night they’d met, and his heart clenched slightly at the confirmation that she’d been afraid at the time. “You’re scared, so I’m not going to leave you to be scared alone. I’m going to go with you and I’m going to stay, too. So.” She waved an arm haphazardly towards his bags, studiously avoiding his eyes. “Get your ass downstairs. I can only flirt with our driver for so long before she realizes that I’m stalling.”_

_In a whirlwind of activity that just seemed synonymous with who Toni was as a person, Jim found himself at home. It had been a terrible shock wave to his system, when he first saw his mom, and despite his earlier bravado, he hadn’t managed to do much except to hold on to her and fight a losing battle against a few tears._

_A few hours later, once his mother had fallen asleep and his uncle had taken up the first watch over her to monitor her rattling breathing, he looked for Toni, feeling suddenly guilty for having abandoned her for as long as he had. He found her in the kitchen just as she was getting off her phone, and when she turned to face him, Jim almost did a double-take at how serious and somber her expression was._

_“Rhodey, great,” she smiled a little when she saw him, but her eyes were laser-focused as she flipped through some notes she’d made in a little notepad. “Okay, listen, I managed to make some calls and there’s this really great doctor who just got off shifts at the moment, and he agreed to make a quick house call. He isn’t one of the top doctors in his field, but all we really need from him is a preliminary diagnosis, just so we know what we’re dealing with. I’ve made a list of specialists who are the top of their respective fields, and chatted some with their secretaries, so whatever diagnosis Dr. Jenkins makes, I’ll be ready to put a call in for whichever specialist we need.” Flipping pages, she failed to notice the dumbstruck look on Rhodes’ face._

_When he found his voice, the only thing Jim could think of asking was, “He’s making a house call now? In the middle of the night?”_

_“Money talks, platypus,” she grinned briefly, adding to the air of brisk competence she was exuding._

_Rhodes started to shake his head when he realized what she was saying. “I’m not letting you pay for this, Toni, that’s not…”_

_“You aren’t **letting** me do anything, honeybear,” she refuted calmly. “It’s already done, and it will be done again for whatever treatment Mama Rhodes needs. If you need time to get used to that, I’d suggest you use it now.” Rhodes oscillated violently between annoyed and touched for a few moments, and likely sensing this, Toni crossed the space between them and pinned him with those lethal doe eyes. “Money doesn’t mean anything, Rhodey. Family does. Friendship does. We’ve got both here. Don’t be an idiot, please just let me help you.”_

_“What if you can’t?” The fear that he’d left unspoken up to then, bubbled up and fell from his lips in an anguished whisper. “What if nothing can help?”_

_Leaning on tip-toes, she pressed a kiss to his forehead, a mimicry of what he did for her when she had a bad dream and showed up at his dorm in the middle of the night. “Starks don’t accept failure, sugarplum,” she told him dryly, the softness of her smile belying the flat tone. “If there isn’t a solution, then we’ll make one. It’s as simple as that.”_

_And some may have thought it ridiculous, but in that kitchen with his best friend at close to 2 in the morning, Rhodes actually believed that._

 

True to her word, a doctor came to the house and examined his mother, and that was followed by a call to a lung specialist who Toni worked her magic on and flew out to the nearest hospital within the next two days itself. A battery of tests later had revealed early stages of lung cancer, and in the space of time wherein Rhodes, his mother and his uncle had grieved the news, Toni had arranged with the top surgeon in the country to perform the surgery to remove the tumors in his mother’s lungs and also began the process of arranging chemotherapy for after the surgery. She’d done some reading up after the initial diagnosis and after chatting with the doctors, found that the surgery combined with chemo would make the cancer less likely to return. After explaining all that to them, she went on to talk about scheduling the chemo, totally oblivious to the shell-shocked reaction she was inspiring from the Rhodes clan. 

Rhodes had never seen his best friend take charge like that before, but no one could deny its effectiveness or her efficiency, as his mother’s treatment went off without a hitch and her recovery went just as smoothly. She’d been in remission ever since. 

That was when Jim had realized something very important. 

There was no one, not a single person on the face of the earth, who he would rather have at his side when his back was against the wall. When all hope was lost, when he was staring down the barrel of a gun, he wanted Toni to be the one he had watching his six. Because for all that he knew and trusted so many good and loyal men in the army, there was just nobody like Toni Stark when you needed to make the impossible, possible. 

There was nobody like Toni Stark, period. 

She’d changed his life irrevocably that night, and though he hadn’t known it at the time, Rhodes was profusely grateful to whatever deity had given him the chance to be there, to save her and then be saved by her in a much more profound way later on. Not for nothing, she was one of the most important people in his life and he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Even when she frequently gave him heart attacks and arrhythmias with her tendency to prioritize her safety below that of others’. 

Pushing down the nauseating feeling in his gut that had amplified with Toni’s veiled plea for them to get her out of there, Rhodes focused on the game plan. “For those of us who weren’t invited to the sick-kid- playdate, what the hell is Pick-Up-Sticks?”

_Focus on getting her out, not on the injuries she had to have sustained in the collapse,_ he told himself firmly. 

Easier said than done, but he had to try. 

**“Think Jenga, but from the top instead of the bottom,”** Toni piped up, and with all the experience Rhodes had in Toni-speak, that actually managed to clarify things for him. 

Because Barnes still looked a little lost, Jim helpfully translated. “The structure is too unstable to blast or pound our way through to her, but if we remove rubble from the top, carefully, it won’t dislodge other debris and cause a secondary collapse,” he explained, and the soldier nodded once at him in wordless thanks. To Toni, he felt compelled to point out, “The process will be a slow one. You and the kid got enough oxygen to last?”

From the looks that Rogers and Barnes and Banner exchanged, Jim wondered whether he wanted to hear the answer. 

“There’s no oxygen supply,” Rogers told him in a low voice, and it was telling of how much Rhodes was putting aside that he didn’t immediately snap at the Captain for answering a question he’d directed at Toni (Rhodey took his rivalries very seriously.) “The suit has an emergency supply, but…”

Of course. Toni would want to siphon that supply to the kid instead of herself, increase his odds of survival. Jim really fucking hated the honor in that plan. 

**“Unless…”** The voice over the comms was hesitant in a way that all of them recognized. It meant that Toni had a plan of some kind, one that might not be conventional by any stretch of the imagination, but one that would probably buy them some much needed time. **“I mean, I’m not totally sure, but I can try…”** she mumbled, sounding like she was already mapping out a plan of action in her head. 

“What are you thinking, sweetheart?” Rogers asked, and as much as Jim was still sure that he didn’t deserve Toni, there was no denying how much the Captain was struggling in that moment. He usually steered clear of pet names on the field, but the fact that he was using them now meant that he wasn’t thinking like the tactician he was. He was thinking like a boyfriend. 

Rhodey would have complained, only it worked wonders on Toni. Sounding a lot less frazzled, she answered, **“If it comes to it, I think I can jury rig the suit’s supply and the air filtration system so that it supplies oxygen outwardly instead of inside the suit. It’ll use up a lot of battery and it won’t buy you as much time as if I’d put the kid in the suit alone, but it should increase the chances of both of us making it out.”**

When you knew someone for as long as Jim had known Toni, it wasn’t difficult to spot the tiniest inflections and nuances in that person’s tone that told a complete story all its own. Case in point, right now, and that uneasy lilt to his best friend’s voice while she detailed her hopeful plan; it told Rhodey that there was something she wasn’t saying. Something that she was worried about, but didn’t want them to. 

He was sorely tempted to call her on it right then and there, but another thing that the years with Toni had taught him, was when to push and when not to. The genius had a way of seeing multiple possibilities and charting several possible outcomes to a single action, so it was more than likely that her worry was based on a worst-case scenario, and none of them needed to be reminded of that possibility right now. It wouldn’t help Toni and it certainly wouldn’t help their rescue efforts. So Rhodes kept his mouth shut. 

“That’s great, doll, do that,” Rogers instructed, the relief in his voice premature, but Jim graciously didn’t point that out. “We’re going to start coordinating from up here, we’ll get you out of there, I promise.”

_I promise, too,_ Rhodey thought to himself, steeling his heart against the sickening image of his pseudo little sister, hurt and scared and reaching out for help. Then, as he did at any time that he needed a bolstering of determination, he reminded himself of the motto he’d appropriated from Toni herself. _If there isn’t a solution, we’ll make one._

 

###

 

**_“Toni?!”_ **

Smiling slightly to herself at the half-incredulous, half-hopeful greeting, the inventor offered a light, “Hiya, Birdbrain.”

Toni knew that she was taking something of a risk, using some of the battery power of the suit to call home, but she also knew that it wasn’t something that was up for debate or second consideration. Her watch; still displaying solid vital signs for the sleeping Maico; clearly told her that it was approaching eight-thirty PM at the tower, and that meant that it was closing in on Peter’s bedtime, and that meant that she needed to call to say goodnight to her son. 

Yes, it was a risk. Yes, it was a high price. No, it was not negotiable. Because Peter was worth any risk she could possibly take and there was no price she wasn’t willing to pay to do what her son needed, and if she knew anything about that kid, it was that he’d need the reassurance of a little routine tonight. Neither her nor Steve was at home, and maybe he didn’t know exactly what had happened, but Peter had to know that something was wrong, and Toni just couldn’t let him go to sleep, almost guaranteed to have nightmares, if she could prevent them. 

**“What the… how the fuck… I thought…”**

Laughing slightly, because Clint seemed to have that effect on her even now, Toni took pity on the archer and explained. “They’re working on it.” She knew they were; could still feel the occasional trickle of dust and dirt falling on to her and the kid, threatening ominously to bury them completely. It was enough to make her go close to crazy with tension and anticipation. “I’m using the suit’s backup power. It’s a long story.”

**“Are you hurt?”** The demand was spoken in a serious tone that Clint rarely used, and it told Toni a lot about how him, and probably the rest of the team at home as well, was taking her predicament. She’d managed to reassure Steve, Rhodey, Bucky and Bruce, but it simply hadn’t occurred to her that the rest of her team could have done well to hear from her too. 

Pushing away the guilt, Toni made her voice light and playful. “Just my ego, Legolas. The kid I’m with is wearing a t-shirt with Big Green on it.” 

As she’d intended, her words elicited a bark of laughter from Barton. She knew that the man wouldn’t be fooled into thinking that she was completely unhurt, but that wasn’t the point; all he’d needed to know was that she was still fighting. And she was showing him that she was. 

**“The youth of today,”** he mock lamented. **“They have no sense of style. Obviously, he should be wearing the Hawkeye tee. Speaking of which, I got Pete one! It came with a matching bow and arrow.”**

Biting her lip to suppress the laugh that was bubbling in her throat, because Toni just knew there would be a hint of hysteria in there, she managed to drawl back, “Listen, Featherbutt, if you try to teach him how to shoot an arrow again, I’m not gonna stop Steve from scalping you with a spork.” 

A blatant lie, it had to be said. It was a well-known fact among the Avengers that, despite their near-constant battle of wits, pranks and general ribbing of each other, there existed a very unique and specific bond between Toni and Clint that defied all reason but prevailed against all odds. When it came down to it, they were both rather enormously protective of each other, and Toni wasn’t sure just why it was that way for Clint, but she knew exactly what had triggered that bond for her. Of the entire team, it had been Clint who’d been the first person to make her feel like she was part of something bigger; that the Avengers were a family, their family. In the same way, he’d been the first person to make her appreciate the notion behind coming home…

 

_Close to dead on her feet and wanting nothing more than a hot shower and the familiarity of her workshop, Toni stumbled out of the car after putting it in park. Happy crossed around the back to get her bag before giving her a light pat on the shoulder as he climbed into the driver’s seat._

_“See you tomorrow, Hap,” she mumbled around a yawn, sending him a lazy, two-fingered salute. He must have said something back, but her head felt like it was too full of cotton to appreciate anything beyond the quiet chime of the elevator as it opened in front of her and the soft, but warm **“Welcome home, Madam,”** that JARVIS offered her._

_She went straight to her floor, dumping her bags at the entrance to the penthouse and making a beeline for the bathroom. She stripped her clothes off as she walked, wanting to cry when she saw the steam already fogging up the mirrors from the shower. JARVIS must have set the temperature for the shower when she’d selected her level on the elevator._

_“You’re too good to me, J,” she sighed happily as she stepped underneath the spray. Toni relished in washing off the past two weeks; contrary to popular opinion, there wasn’t much joy in traveling for business when the entire time was spent schmoozing investors and dropping in on R &D because a handful of incompetent, lazy asses were single-handedly trying to ruin SI’s impeccable return on investment portfolio. _

_When she felt a little more human and a lot more awake, she stepped out of the shower and made quick work drying herself off and throwing on a pair of sweats and a wife beater. She left her hair open so that it could dry, and knowing without asking that JARVIS would keep her workshop on lockdown until she ate something, she stabbed the button in the elevator to take her to the communal floor._

_It hadn’t been very long that she’d been living with her teammates; after the Chitauri invasion, she’d given all the Avengers an open-ended invitation to the tower, and though Bruce had been the only one to take her up on the offer right away, Rogers, Barton, Romanoff and Thor had followed in short succession over the six months since then. It had been surprisingly easy to adjust to having people living with her, not only because of the tower being so massive that each Avenger had their own floor, but also because they were strangely compatible when they weren’t eyeing each other up in blatant mistrust._

_The one big advantage of having other people there, was the fact that there was always food in the tower. When she’d been alone, food had been limited to the times she remembered to have it, or the times when Rhodey or Pepper was there and stayed for a bit. Now, though, there was an actual grocery list dedicated to ordering whatever each of the Avengers desired, and because Bruce adored her, Toni was sure that he’d added a few power bars in anticipation of shoving them on her when they worked on experiments together. Surely it wasn’t considered pilfering if it was meant for her, right?_

_Yup. That was sound logic._

_Toni rolled her shoulders as she stepped off the elevator and on to the communal floor. The sooner she got one of the power bars from the pantry, the sooner she could claim adequate sustenance and talk JARVIS into letting her into the workshop to get started on some of the upgrade ideas she’d sketched out on crappy hotel room notepads. And, on that note, it was probably really sad that she was at the point where she needed to talk her AI into anything. Obviously, she was no longer the boss in this relationship._

_She was barely out of the elevator, the sounds of her teammates actually prompting a smile to flicker on her lips, when the general chatter and noise was disrupted by a whoop of excitement, and the vent above her clanged open._

_The next thing she knew, there was a flash of blond dropping to the ground in front of her and arms were wrapping around her, and Toni clung on for dear life as Clint lifted her clean off the floor and spun her around in a quick circle._

_“Toni!” he outright cheered, a sheer, genuine happiness in his voice that was hard to dispute. “You’re back!”_

_For her part, the genius simply hung on, brain short-circuiting in a not unimpressive feat. “Huh?”_

_“You’ve been gone for two weeks,” the archer stressed, putting her down and beaming at her. “I missed you. Nobody wanted to super-glue the poptarts to the top shelf with me.”_

_For a moment, all Toni could do was stare at her teammate. Barton didn’t seem to take any issue with that, smiling happily down at her without reservation._

_Oh. Okay. She knew this game. “Jesus, Clint, are you drunk? It’s nine am,” she pointed out around a grin, although she wasn’t really one to judge. “Cap’s gonna be so pissed with you.”_

_“I’m not drunk,” he rolled his eyes, and Toni was forced to admit that he did, for all intents and purposes, look bizarrely sober. “It’s just… the tower wasn’t the same without you, is all,” he shrugged, finally starting to look a little sheepish, and Toni couldn’t find any hint of sarcasm or taunting in his tone to suggest that he was anything but serious._

_A slow, pleasant warmth blossomed in her chest. In her entire life, there had only been one other person who’d missed her and been happy to see her come home, and that had been Jarvis when she’d been in boarding school and came home for the holidays. She’d forgotten what it felt like… the excitement to see the people you missed, the thrilling rush of being greeted by them in a way that showed you how much you were loved, how much they missed you right back…_

_Since its inception, Toni hadn’t considered the tower home. She hadn’t even considered her Malibu place home. They were all just places where she could do her work and occasionally sleep, maybe eat. But now? With all these people in the tower who she watched movies with and bantered with and lived with?_

_It was home._

_She was home._

 

Warmed by the memory, it was a little easier for Toni to stop thinking about all the ways in which everything could go wrong, and just focus on trying to get back home. To get back to her family, which had grown since then but was no less precious to her. 

**“You’re such helicopter parents,”** Clint groused playfully, bringing her back to the conversation. **“You know, sometimes a kid’s just gotta-…”**

Whatever kids just sometimes had to do, she never got to find out, because the super-sensitive tech in the suit managed to pick up a faint sound that Toni hated, but couldn’t ever mistake. 

“Clint,” she cut him off slowly, an almost dangerous edge to her tone. “You feel like telling me just why I can hear my son crying?”

She could picture the archer’s flinch as clearly as if he were right in front of her. **“Nothing you can’t set to rights,”** he hastened to assure her, and Toni heard his footsteps as he began to walk, the low sobbing becoming louder with proximity and breaking her heart. **“He didn’t want to go to sleep until you phoned to say goodnight, and Nat was trying to explain that you couldn’t today, and he got upset.”**

Toni pursed her lips to keep in her low exclamation of guilt. She ached to scoop Peter up and reassure him that everything was okay, but she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t even ask Steve to do that, because her lover had come to her rescue, and there was no way she could regret saving Maico but Toni would have given anything that was hers to give, to spare Peter from all this. 

**“Mommy?”** came the small sniffle, and the address simultaneously broke and warmed Toni’s heart. She’d never realized just how much she would love being called that, not until two years ago when she’d stopped fighting the perception Peter had of her, but she’d also never anticipated the kind of heartbreak that came from being unable to give her son exactly what he needed in that moment; herself. 

Swallowing twice, she managed to keep the sorrow out of her voice. “Hey, sweet pea. What’s with the tears?”

**“Aunt Nat said that you couldn’t say goodnight today,”** Peter mumbled, and he sounded so miserable that it made the backs of her eyes sting. **“I was _tryna_ be brave, but I _miss_ you. I want you to come home, I want _you_ to tuck me in and sing me my bambi song until I go asleep.”**

Peter wasn’t a child prone to complaining and he certainly wasn’t one to make demands for anything, so the fact that he was doing so now told Toni just how much all this was affecting him. It made her wish, more than anything, that she could just be at the tower in that moment, tucking Peter in as was their routine and singing that Italian lullaby that her mother had always sung for her, that had somehow found its way into the pair’s goodnight ritual. 

“Oh, my _bambino_ ,” she murmured without thinking, tears slipping down her cheeks against her best efforts. Knowing that hearing her cry would only make things worse on her son, Toni forced herself to clear her throat and softly propose, “How about Aunt Nat tucks you in, just for tonight, and I’ll sing for you on here until you fall asleep, just like we’ve been doing with Daddy since I left?” Then, because she knew that only one thing had the slightest chance of helping, she added, “The next time you need to go to sleep, I’ll be there, sweet pea. Promise.”

Even if she had to break all her bones to get there. 

Thankfully, neither Clint nor the presumably present but silent Natasha, said anything to contradict her insane promise. Instead, the Toni was treated to the shuddery breath and the quick sniffle that meant, happily, that Peter’s crying was easing off. 

Finally, she was rewarded with a small, **“Okay, Mommy. I love you.”**

“Goodnight, sweet pea. I love you more,” Toni murmured, and uncaring of the audience, began to sing softly. 

It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard her sing for Peter before. 

Halfway through the song, Peter’s breathing evened out, and though she knew that he was asleep, Toni still finished the lullaby. She vaguely recalled her mother explaining, once, that the lullaby was magic, meant to imbue a mother’s love and protection to her little bambina. At the time, Toni had been but a baby girl herself, and yet even when she knew better, the lullaby had always made her feel safe and loved. She hadn’t yet explained the meaning of the words to Peter, in the way that her mother had, but it seemed to have the same effect on him. 

It made her wonder, for the first time in long years, whether there was any truth to the magic her mother had told her about. 

**“He’s asleep,”** Nat’s hushed voice came over the speaker a few minutes after Toni’s last note hung in the air. 

The inventor sighed slightly, trusting that she wouldn’t have to keep up any façade with the ex-assassin. Not only would Nat probably see right through it, but even without it, the redhead always seemed to have faith in Toni’s ability to fight the odds. Even more faith than Toni had in herself. 

After a moment, Toni offered a soft, “Thanks for staying behind with him.” She knew just how much that must have cost Nat; the other woman was just as protective as Toni was over this family that they’d managed to find and create, and for whatever reason, that protectiveness had always applied tenfold to Toni herself. It would have been no small feat for the redhead to put aside her instinct to help Toni in order to stay behind and take care of what was more important to Toni than herself. 

**“Keep your thanks,”** she replied mildly, and Toni smiled at the typically sharp voice meant to push her into action. No last words for Natasha Romanoff. **“And while you’re at it, keep that promise, too.”**

“I love you too, Nat.”

Toni couldn’t see it, but she wagered that Nat was smiling at least a little. **“Hang in there, _mladshaya sestra,_ ” **she murmured, the edge of Russian telling a story of emotions that the spy wouldn’t allow to see the light of day. **“We’ll cover things here until you get home.”**

Toni heard everything that Nat wasn’t saying; _I love you, take care of yourself, come home safely, I’ll protect Peter like my own until you’re here to do it yourself._ It was everything she needed to hear without actually being told. 

“Soon,” was all she said in reply before cutting the call, trusting that Nat would hear her just the same. She had plans to make, and backup plans to the plan just in case. 

She had a promise to keep. 

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: Bambino = Baby in Italian and Mladshaya sestra = Little sister in Russian. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed it! Again, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! 
> 
> J <3


	5. The Calm (Before The Storm)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a little delayed, because Bucky muse was being a little jerk, but here it is! So sorry for the wait, lovelies, and also sorry for the (probably) horrific translations I used in this chap! Blame Google translate for whatever mistakes may have been made, please XD 
> 
> Translations are in brackets at the end of the paragraph within which the words are spoken <3
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

“Wake up, tiny human. It has… By Odin, I cannot believe that I let you talk me into this… Awaken, Son of Stark!”

Peter became aware slowly, confused at first as to why someone was shaking his shoulder. It didn’t feel like his Daddy, who was always soft and gentle, and Mommy woke him up with cuddles, so… 

Knuckling his eyes, he squinted up at his Uncle Loki, bottom lip wobbling for having been woken up. “Wassa matter, Uncle Loki?” he asked tremulously, his brain still feeling a little fuzzy because it was still dark out and the last time he woke up during the dark time, it was because Mommy had to go away for work and was saying bye…

Mommy!

In an instant, Peter was wide awake, scrambling out of his covers. Earlier, when Aunt Nat and Uncle Clint and Uncle Thor had thought he was still napping, Uncle Loki had come to visit. He _said_ it was because he was bored, but secretly, Peter knew that his Uncle Loki was missing Mommy same as he was, and they both agreed that she was gone away for too long. 

Which was when Peter had had the best idea _ever_ , and convinced Uncle Loki to sneak in and wake him up at exactly this time. 

“Finally!” Uncle Loki was complaining, making Peter giggle slightly as he rolled his eyes and threw up his hands like Mommy sometimes did when she was yelling at Dummy. Peter was smart, though, and he saw how Mommy always patted Dummy on the head after, so he figured that the yelling was just a show of love. Uncle Loki definitely loved him, Mommy said so, even when Uncle Loki huffed and puffed like the wolf from the story. “To what end does waking you up at an ungodly hour and praying that my brother doesn’t strike me down for it, help your mother return home any faster?”

Reaching up to take Uncle Loki’s hand with his, Peter began to drag him to the window seat. It was big and comfy, usually used for bedtime stories with one or both of his parents, or a lullaby with Mommy before bed, and a couple times, Mommy had shown him the stars from there. Most importantly, it was the only place that would work for his plan.

With his Uncle Loki grudgingly following, Peter began to explain. “We’re going to use magic to get Mommy to come home tomorrow! All we have to do is wait for the magic time, and then wish _real_ hard!”

“I fail to see the magic you speak of, tiny human.”

Heaving an exaggerated sigh ( because Mommy sometimes did that and it always made Uncle Loki smile before he quickly pretended not to) Peter pushed the tall man on to the window seat before scrambling up to join him. Opening the curtain as wide as it would go, he beamed at the sight of the stars, happy that he could see them. Checking the Avengers clock on his bedside and seeing that it was still 11:06, Peter decided he had enough time to explain, and turned to face his companion. 

“Okay, I’ll ‘splain it the same way Mommy did…”

 

_Peter wriggled off his bed slowly, using the covers to hold on to so that he wouldn’t fall. He smiled happily to himself when he thought he felt the ground with his feet, and bravely let go of the blanket, letting himself land on the floor. He wobbled, just a bit, but was proud of himself when he didn’t fall over. Falling over was bad, it always hurt and sometimes, he even cried._

_But he was safe, and he was okay, he just couldn’t fall asleep. His Not-Mommy had tucked him in and everything, but she was a little busy today because he hadn’t gotten one of the lullabies and Steve wasn’t there for a bedtime story either. His Not-Mommy had said that Steve needed to go save the world. That was cool, but Peter secretly thought it was cooler that Not-Mommy stayed behind, because when he’d asked, she’d bopped his nose, smiled, and said that she’d stayed behind to tuck him in._

_It seemed sorta like a Mommy thing to do, but Peter was only 4, so he couldn’t be sure._

_Anyway, Not-Mommy had seemed a little sad before, too; which could have also been why there was no lullaby; and Peter thought it was because she was worried about Steve. At least, that’s what Miss Nat had said to Not-Mommy, to which Not-Mommy had replied that it was just simple recon, nothing to worry about. Not-Mommy used a lot of words that Peter didn’t really understand, but he still thought that the words didn’t matter. The way Not-Mommy had held on to her phone after speaking to Steve meant that she was worried._

_Worried was sorta like sad, he guessed, and maybe a little scared, too. So sad-scared? And Peter didn’t want his Not-Mommy to be sad-scared alone, or even worse, have a nightmare (he hated those, but they were better with Not-Mommy there) so he’d decided that he had to go find her._

_Peter wasn’t sure where the lights were, but they kept turning on themselves and Peter supposed it was probably the man inside the house. Not-Mommy talked to him a lot – his name was JARVIS – but Peter hadn’t yet, mostly because he wasn’t sure whereabouts inside the house the man actually was. It was very confusing, but he whispered a small thank you anyway._

_Lights kept coming on, not from the top but along the floor, so Peter decided to follow them. He got to ride down in the eva-lator, and when he got off it, he was in the lounge where he played during the day. It seemed a lot darker and bigger than scarier than it did during the daytime, but before Peter could get frightened, he saw lots of light (coming from the top, this time) streaming out of the kitchen. Maybe Miss Nat or Mister Thor was there, and they could bring him to his Not-Mommy…_

_It was Peter’s lucky day! The 4 year old brightened with delight when he saw Not-Mommy sitting at the counter. She was faced away from him and on the phone, speaking funny to whoever was on the other end, but she was right there, so at least that meant no more looking._

_Padding into the kitchen, he didn’t notice the little jump she gave, but he did notice the helping arm that reached down and scooped him into the chair next to her. He giggled a little and beamed up at her, and Not-Mommy only smiled back and shook her head a little, still talking._

_“Je vais devoir te rappeler plus tard, Monsieur Julienne,” she was saying, and Peter tuned out the funny words to focus on trying to catch Not-Mommy’s hand as she bopped his ears, then his cheeks, then his nose. He giggled again when she suddenly tickled him lightly across his tummy, crossing his arms over his stomach, and Not-Mommy laughed softly. (I’ll have to call you back later, Mister Julienne.)_

_See? It was good that Peter hadn’t left her alone to be sad-scared._

_After tickling him again, Not-Mommy kept speaking. “Je sais, Monsieur, mais je dois partir maintenant. Je m’excuse, nous parlerons plus tard.” (I know, but I have to leave now. I apologize, we will talk later.)_

_Not-Mommy put the phone on the counter and turned to face him, propping her chin in her hand._

_“Good morning, Mister Peter,” she greeted him seriously, and Peter giggled again. Not-Mommy was so funny when she talked to him like he was also a big-people._

_Straightening to try and be a little taller, Peter tried to make his voice the same. “Good morning, Miss Momm- Miss Toni,” he greeted back, remembering at the last second that she was **Not** -Mommy, and she didn’t like him to call her Mommy. She smiled a little, but there was more sad added to the sad-scared with it, so Peter decided he didn’t like that smile. _

_“What are you doing awake, Munchkin?” she asked, reaching over and scooping him up as she stood. Peter balanced comfortably on her hip and laid his head on Not-Mommy’s shoulder. When he got carried by Not-Mommy or Steve, it was his favourite place to be. “I could swear I tucked you in back at a time when all Munchkins needed to be in bed.”_

_Peter nodded agreeably. “I couldn’t go sleep,” he answered honestly, deciding not to mention that there hadn’t been a lullaby or a story. Because it was ‘portant to tell the truth, he added, “I didn’t want you to be sad-scared all alone.”_

_“Sad-scared?”_

_“Uh-huh,” Peter nodded, snuggling in closer as Not-Mommy rubbed his back. “Like when you were talking to Steve. Miss Nat said that you were worried, but you looked a little sad and a little scared on the phone. So since Steve isn’t here, I didn’t want you to be sad-scared ‘lone.”_

_Peter felt warm all over as Not-Mommy kissed the top of his head softly. Her kisses and cuddles also felt like a Mommy’s, but Peter didn’t think it would be very nice to say so, not when she was still Not-Mommy. Mommy was only really allowed after a nightmare, or if he was really scared or sad._

_But… Not-Mommy was sad-scared. Maybe that meant it would be okay, this time?_

_Before he could figure it out, Not-Mommy was stepping out of the eva-lators and walking down the hallway. “Well, it was very brave of you to come and find me, sweet pea,” she whispered into his hair, and Peter swelled up with pride. “Now, let’s get you back to bed, huh?”_

_Peter stayed obediently quiet as they went into his bedroom, wondering if he was allowed to ask Not-Mommy to stay with him. Then she didn’t have to be alone and Peter could also sleep, because he was getting awful sleepy. He got distracted from asking when, instead of going straight to his bed, Not-Mommy took him to the window seat first._

_“Are we readin’ a story?” he asked around a yawn, because that was where he sat whenever he had stories._

_Leaning up into it when Not-Mommy pushed his hair back, Peter almost missed the answer. “Nope. We’re going to do a little magic before bed, instead.”_

_It was enough to intrigue him, and Peter aimed sleepy brown eyes at Not-Mommy. “What kinda magic?”_

_“Well,” Not-Mommy sat down and settled Peter on her lap, where he clung close to her, enjoying the feeling of warmth and safety. “It’s a very special kind of magic. It can only happen when the clock reads 11:11, like right over there.” Not-Mommy pointed at his clock, and Peter felt a flutter of excitement in his chest as he watched it flick over to 11:11 as Not-Mommy spoke._

_The thrill chased away some of his sleepiness. “What do we do?” he asked in a hushed voice. “How do we do the magic?”_

_“People say that your guardian angel hears you best at 11:11,” Not-Mommy explained, just as softly. “So all you have to do, is look up at the stars and put your hands together and make a wish. Wish really, really hard, and hopefully, your guardian angel will hear you and make your wish come true.”_

_Peter nodded enthusiastically, and after all but pressing his forehead to the glass as he looked at the stars, he linked his hands close together, as if praying. “I wish that I could live here forever, please,” he whispered, trusting the magic to make sure that only his guardian angel heard him. “I wish that we could be a proper family and I could stay with Mommy and Steve and everyone else for the rest of my life.”_

_He scrunched his eyes closed, real tight, wishing with all his might because he didn’t want anything more than to stay here with his new family. His old family was up in heaven, Steve said so, so he was sure they wouldn’t mind if he stayed with his new family until he went there, too._

_When he thought he’d wished hard enough, he kissed his linked fingers the way he always did after praying and looked up at Not-Mommy to see if she was done with her wish. She looked a bit like she was crying, but Peter was sure he imagined it, because in the next second, he was being cuddled close as Not-Mommy slipped off the seat and walked to the bed._

_“Right,” she said, clearing her throat a little as she laid him down and covered him up again. “No more adventures tonight, honey, okay? How about we both get some sleep?”_

_“Will you stay here with me?” he asked tentatively, and smiled happily when Not-Mommy nodded easily. She settled herself next to him, on top of the covers, and even better, began to softly sing the bambi song that he loved so much._

_As Peter drifted off into sleep, he kept right on wishing and hoping that his guardian angel could hear him._

 

“I see.” Uncle Loki sounded like he didn’t believe it, so Peter hastened to reassure him. 

“It worked, it really did!” Daddy had come home the very next day, and that night, him and Mommy had sat him down and asked him if he was okay with being adopted by them. Once he understood what adopted was, Peter had realized that his wish had come true, and he’d been so happy. Except… “Can I tell you a secret?” he asked Uncle Loki, with no small amount of sheepishness. 

Uncle Loki nodded, all dignified. “You may.”

“I found out who my guardian angel is,” Peter admitted, flushed with happiness. “It’s my Mommy.” Before they’d asked him, Peter had heard Daddy asking Mommy how she had managed to get the adoption done so fast. He still couldn’t say that he understood all the words Mommy had used in her answer, but when he’d realized that she was the one who made it so he could stay, he reasoned the rest out for himself; if only his guardian angel could hear and grant his wish, then obviously Mommy was his guardian angel. 

Uncle Loki smiled slightly, looking softer than he normally looked. “I won’t tell,” he promised solemnly. 

“Thanks, Uncle Loki,” Peter beamed, throwing his arms around him quickly. Then, turning to his clock, he waited anxiously until it turned exactly 11:11, and promptly looked up at the stars, hands clasped as tight as he could manage. After he found the brightest star, he concentrated on it and shut his eyes. “I wish for Mommy to come home tomorrow,” he whispered, focusing every last bit of his energy on his wish. “Please, please, please. I wish for Mommy and Daddy to come back home, with Uncle Bucky and Uncle Bruce. And for everyone to be happy and together. Please, Momm- uh, please guardian angel,” he hastily corrected himself. “I wish…please…”

 

###

 

Bucky worked with strict single-mindedness, a repetition of motion that reminded him, somewhat, of his first time shipping out. Back then, he’d been a young hotshot convinced that he was going to serve and that he wouldn’t fall prey to the wake-up call that a first real tour was supposed to give all fresh soldiers. Like the rest of them, he’d been woefully mistaken, and in that first week alone, had considered calling it quits give or take seven times. 

It had been beyond difficult for him then, away from home and his family without any contact for the first time. The worst part hadn’t been the aching muscles or the abhorrent living conditions or the constant knowledge that lives were depending on him; the worst had been the sheer distance away from everything he’d grown up knowing and loving. It was the reminder, every day, that his Ma woke up praying that she wouldn’t get a telegram about him. The reminder that Stevie was trying to enlist and probably also curled up in a ball at night trying to breathe right because he always pushed himself too much during the day. The reminder that everything could go to hell in a handbasket for him in an instant, and his loved ones would be left to suffer through life without him there to do whatever he could to help them. 

It was enough to make any man crazy, but his first Sergeant had given him advice that he’d never forgotten: Don’t focus on the things you can’t control. Focus on what you’re doing, and do it damn well, because that’s the only thing you can do to help ‘em now.

So that was what Bucky did whenever he felt his protective instincts turning him into a basket case. He focused on what he could do, and he did it to the best of his ability. In this case, that meant removing rubble and debris without care for anything other than his end goal; getting to Toni. 

Back at the beginning, when he’d first clawed his way through the Winter Soldier programming, something requiring this kind of laser-focus would have put him on edge. For all that he had Stevie’s constant bolstering and Toni’s unshakeable faith, it had still been incredibly difficult for him to trust in himself, and trust that he had the Soldier under control. 

The thing was, the Soldier wasn’t so much a mindset as a wholly different personality. Toni had explained it best, once, likening the Soldier to the Hulk, in that they both had a conscience and mind and decision-making and logical capabilities completely separate to that of their hosts, so to speak. The Soldier was created to the sole purpose of fulfilling a mission, but since breaking out of HYDRA’s hold, had gotten a chance to develop an existence through Bucky. That had just been another thing to freak him out, before, concerned as he was about how those developments would affect his ability to control the personality; and by control, of course, he meant pack away in the hopes of it never seeing the light of day again. 

But that had been before. And like many of the little ways he’d grown since coming to live at the tower, ‘before’ denoted a time when he hadn’t been as close to Toni as he had become since the lab incident. There were so many things that he could attribute to the genius’ influence on him, but this? Forming a sort of peaceful co-existence with the Soldier? That was quite easily the thing he was most thankful to Toni for…

 

_Agitation made it difficult for Bucky to sit in one place, let alone get a decent night’s rest. The fight earlier had been a difficult one; not even because their enemies were that great, they had just been a swarm of AIM goons; but one of them had uttered a curse in Russian, and that had been enough to make the Soldier inside him restless. Which was ridiculous, since he spoke Russian with Nat, Toni and Clint often enough, but in the heat of battle, it had sent him into a momentary tailspin._

_He’d waved the team off afterwards with a boyish grin and a dismissive shrug, but as the clock ticked sluggishly over to 2:16am, he could no longer deny that he was having some serious trouble holding the Soldier back._

_Dismay and disappointment in himself packed a bitter punch, exacerbating the feeling of inadequacy. He’d gone so long without an incident; so long without his control being stretched to this breaking point he was at; and he was going to blow it all over practically nothing. Those AIM morons hadn’t even touched a hair on his head, for all that the team had dismantled them with brutal and harmonized efficiency, and yet here he was, trembling and pulling at his hair, and jittery as a toddler during a thunderstorm._

_None of the rest of the team was as defective as him. Hell, Stevie had come home, played with his kid, even cooked a light supper for the team before turning in with Toni for the night. Clint and Nat had retired to their rooms not long after, Thor was still on a high from battle and out celebrating, and Bruce had been asleep since before they’d even gotten back to the tower. There was no point even mentioning Toni; she was as badass as they came, cracking jokes from start to finish of the battle, and then afterwards too, and tending subtly to injuries when they came home before taking over Peter duty from Steve. She did practically everything without ever breaking a sweat or losing her composure even once._

_He didn’t deserve to be on a team like this. He was far too broken._

_Distress had him ripping himself jerkily out of bed, taking shaky steps until he stumbled into the hallway of his floor and through the elevator doors. JARVIS had probably sent it for him, but he had neither the calm nor the presence of mind to thank the robot for it. Instead, he just all but fell into it and jabbed the button that would take him to the communal floor. He knew, intellectually, that he ought to just stay on his floor and thus minimize the risk of the Soldier hurting anyone if (when) he lost control, but the call of the familiarity of the common floor was too great to pass on. Maybe if he was incredibly lucky, the lingering scents of his teammates would give him something else to focus on…_

_Without entirely knowing how, he found himself on the couch in the living room. He pressed the bottoms of his palms against his eyes, as if that would physically push the memories away. As if it would push the Soldier away. He knew that it was a fruitless endeavour, but he couldn’t think of anything that could help and he was feeling the edge of desperation keenly enough to be willing to try anything._

_“James?”_

_The voice was soft and gentle, only lilting just slightly with question, but it was still enough to make him nearly jump out of his skin. In the next second, he felt like a complete idiot, but he couldn’t bring himself to wave Toni off as she quickly settled in next to him. A soothing hand found his back and Bucky almost wanted to buckle over with the sheer relief he felt at the familiar, caring touch._

_“There you go, honey,” Toni was saying softly, in a voice he’d only ever heard her use on Peter before, when the kid had a nightmare and she was trying to coax him back to sleep. “It’s okay, you’re alright. We’re here in the tower, you’re with me, James, and I got you okay?”_

_Though he should have felt pathetic, needing to be calmed like a child, the only thing Bucky could summon at that moment was relief. He unconsciously shifted closer to Toni and somehow, found himself sprawled with his head and torso impossibly curled in the inventor’s lap and his legs haphazardly dangling off the end of the couch. Toni didn’t even bat an eyelid as she kept stroking his hair and offering calming words, the continual repetition of his rarely-used first name bringing him back into himself and away from the Soldier._

_He couldn’t tell how long it had been before he felt halfway like himself again, but as soon as the trembles were gone and his nerves were frayed instead of buzzing like live wire, he tried to speak. “I’m really…”_

_“Don’t,” Toni cut him off softly before he could apologize. “Why didn’t you say anything, or come up to find Steve or me?”_

_The question was asked without rebuke, but Bucky still felt a little like a reprimanded child. His intent had been to spare his two best friends the worry, and of course not to burden the couple with his problems, but that had quite obviously backfired with this. Toni was going to worry twice as much now, and Bucky wasn’t afraid that she was going to tell Steve; he was sure she wouldn’t; but that made it somewhat worse. It meant that she was going to fret alone and stretch herself even thinner making sure that Bucky was fine and that Steve never had to know he had ever been otherwise._

_Pinching the bridge of his nose, Bucky resigned himself to honesty. She deserved that much out of him. “I didn’t want either of ya to worry, and… I just, I didn’t think ya deserved t’be saddled with someone so broken.”_

_“Silly Snowflake,” Toni said, but her voice was fond. “We worry about everyone on the team, it’s kind of a full-time job in itself. And personally, I know a lot about being broken, and honey, you’re not it.”_

_Bucky did a double take, shifting on to his back (but not off her lap) so that he could send her an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”_

_“You’re not,” she repeated with conviction, still playing with his hair in that unfailingly soothing way. “You have PTSD; it was called shellshock, maybe that term is more familiar to you; and who can blame you? You’ve had horrible things happen to you. But that doesn’t make you broken, Bucky Bear, it’s entirely understandable…”_

_“No,” Bucky shook his head, sidetracked a little by the mention of his shellshock, but picking back up on the thread of his disbelief quickly. “I meant, what do you mean you know a lot about being broken? You’re the most put-together person I know.”_

_Toni smiled a little at that. “Well, as much as I hate to break the illusion, I’m not nearly as perfect as I make out as being,” she replied a little dryly, but her grin softened the edges of the self-deprecating joke. “I’ve had years of practice putting up a front, Bucky, but I’m certainly not altogether whole. My nightmares have nightmares of their own, and that was before the PTSD that came from Iron Woman.” She paused, so briefly that Bucky might not have even noticed had he not been staring intently at her. Whatever she was about to say, he knew, wasn’t something that came easily to her. “Some nights, you know, I still dream about being a kid and… well, my dad… he wasn’t the nicest person at the best times, and he had bad times more often than good at home. He took a lot of that out on me and my mother. There are nights I still wake up in a cold sweat, flinching at every touch as if it’s Howard coming at me.”_

_Agitation again, this time born from slow-burning fury rather than fear, had Bucky sitting back upright. He aimed intense blue eyes on Toni, trying to think of the words that would encompass everything he was feeling; his intense desire to beat Howard Stark to a pulp, first and foremost. Then his deep and potent regret that Toni had ever had to go through that kind of childhood. The irrational wish that he could have been there to protect her younger self. The acknowledgement of how difficult that admission had to have been for her, combined with the awe that she’d done that for him._

_When he couldn’t find the words, he settled for a weak, “That doesn’t make you broken. It makes you strong because you lived through it and came out on top.”_

_And then, when she only smiled serenely at him, he realized that the words were meant for him as much as they were meant for her._

_“Listen to me,” she urged him quietly, and her voice was serious enough for Bucky to give her all his attention. “My point is, we’re all a little damaged. Everyone in this tower has lived through something that drives them out of bed at 2am and brings them to this floor. The only difference is that we’ve lived through some of those nightmares together, enough so that we know exactly how to ask, or ask without asking, when we need help. You need to figure out what’s your way, even if it’s just doing exactly what you did, but giving me some kind of signal so I know better. We’re a family now, Bucky, but we had to work hard to make it that way. We want you to be part of it, too, and I know that it’s going to be a little while still, before you find your comfort zone with us, but it starts here, with you realizing that you’re not the only damaged one in this home. And you know what?” With all the gentleness she usually reserved for Peter, Toni leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “It’s completely okay to be a little damaged.”_

_The words lifted a weight off his shoulders that Bucky hadn’t even known was there. Knowing that he wasn’t the only one who struggled some days made a difference, somehow; not because any part of him relished in his teammates’ suffering, but because it humanized them to him. Made him feel less like he was… well, less._

_It helped him, in fact, to give voice to his greatest fear. “What if I lose control?” he whispered, rubbing a hand over his face wearily. “What if the Soldier takes the reigns and I hurt someone?”_

_For all that she’d been soft and perfectly empathetic with him up till then, Toni’s reaction to his concerns surprised the hell out of him. The inventor snorted indelicately, as if the very idea of that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard._

_“I’m sorry, Snowflake,” she apologized, still laughing slightly when she noticed the unimpressed look on his face. “I’m not laughing at you, or trivializing your fear, I promise, it’s just… have you ever spoken to Winter?”_

_It took Bucky a moment, as it always did whenever Toni mentioned the Soldier like he was a long-lost comrade in arms. “You call him Winter?” he asked, more than a little mystified and distracted by the innocuous name._

_“Of course not,” Toni rolled her eyes, the ‘duh’ implicit in her voice. Bucky started to nod, but was only further mind-boggled when she continued, “That’s the team’s nickname for him. I tend towards calling him Popsicle. I think he likes it.”_

_The former Sergeant blinked slowly, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. “There’s cold-blooded assassin programming inside me… and you like to call him Popsicle?” he asked in a deadpanned voice, clearly insinuating his current impression of the inventor’s intelligence._

_“You sound just like Bruce,” she rolled her eyes slightly, not looking daunted in the least by his response. On the contrary, she only got a little more animated. “The Soldier is just like the Hulk. A part of you, and more than that, a part of you with a consciousness. I’ve spoken to him before, remember?”_

_As if Bucky could forget. He’d been despairing inside his own mind, hoping that Steve would just throw him off the top of the tower before he hurt the reckless Stark. Though the Soldier had ended up doting on Toni like she was a defenseless little kitten, the idea of how wrong that first meeting could have gone haunted his memories even now._

_Still, she didn’t require his answer to keep right on talking. “He’s developed a mind outside of HYDRA conditioning, and his mind is inextricably linked to yours. He gets protective of you, of whoever you care about, because without a mission, there’s just you. Just us. He finally has a chance to exercise his consciousness, but you keep denying him and it’s frustrating in times like this, when all he wants is to know that everything is fine. Something put you on guard today, and he can sense that, and wants to know whether anyone needs protecting, because that’s still his primary function.”_

_For a moment, Bucky was quiet. What displaced him the most was how much sense that theory made. Objectively, he could admit that the Soldier was more restless than homicidal; and Bucky was sure of that because he could tell the difference, having felt both emotions rather keenly. The only catch was that he wasn’t sure how exactly he could trust his own objectivity anymore. The cost if he was wrong… he didn’t want to think about what that would be._

_“I can’t lose my control on the basis of my gut feeling, doll.” He spoke the words softly, as though he were confessing some great weakness, and maybe he was. “I don’t trust myself enough to make that call.”_

_Toni shrugged and replied easily, “So trust me, instead.”_

_And he did. Of course he did, how could he not? Just…_

_Like she always did, Toni seemed to understand what he couldn’t say and let him off the hook by standing up and taking his hand to pull him with her. Bucky followed pliantly only to stand still in front of the genius as she reached her hands up to cup his face._

_“You don’t have to do anything right now,” she reassured him gently, “but when you feel ready, just let me know and I’ll show you what a softy your killer alter ego is. As for you, Popsicle…” A part of him – the Winter Soldier part – sparked in awareness, but unlike the usual fight for control, the Soldier seemed to content to limit his awareness to listening to Toni, showing no indicator that he wanted control. “Everything is fine,” the genius enunciated softly, brown eyes intense as they locked on Bucky’s. “Everyone is safe. I promise. Otdokhni seychas, businka.” (Relax now, sweetie.)_

_The Russian didn’t surprise him, but the way the Soldier all but purred as he calmed with the soft endearment could have knocked him right off his feet. It was something he’d never experienced from the Soldier before; this ready compliance; and it made him think that Toni was right after all. Maybe he was the mission to the Soldier now, since there was nothing left, and if he was the mission, then it was simply a case of learning to trust both parts of himself. Accepting both parts of himself._

_He actually slumped with the relief that came from the Soldier stopping his incessant banging against Bucky’s mind. Toni pushed him gently, but insistently back on to the couch and covered him with a nearby throw. Instead of leaving, like he’d expected her to, the billionaire only murmured an order at JARVIS to dim the lights and put on a movie called The Lion King._

_They were on the second movie when Steve joined them, and their third re-run when the rest of the team dribbled in._

_And Bucky didn’t feel for a single second the rest of that night, like he was broken._

 

It had taken, of course, a lot more time and even more setbacks before Bucky had reached this elusive point of contentment with his other self, but Toni and Steve had been there for him unfalteringly until he’d gotten there. It was the beauty of having friends again; of having family; to be able to have someone else reach their hand out and pull him up whenever he fell to the ground. 

He never thought he’d have to return that favour literally. 

A particularly ferocious yank of some rubble earned him a look from War Machine that Bucky could guess, without the man lifting his faceplate, was probably cautioning with a hint of threat. Rhodes took Toni’s safety as seriously as the rest of them and though he and the Colonel had reached an understanding based thereupon, Bucky knew that he wasn’t exempt from the other man’s wrath if he did anything to hurt Toni. And he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

The glance he’d exchanged with Rhodes had given Bucky an opportunity to take stock of his surroundings, and the waning light was the first thing he noticed. It sent a spike of apprehension through him, wondering as he was whether they would be able to get much done without the benefit of 20/20 sight, but for the moment, he kept working. 

And would continue to do so until the darkness forced him to stop. 

 

###

 

Toni, contrary to public opinion, was not a soulless automaton. 

She didn’t stuff her pillows with money from war profiteering, she didn’t don her suit with the intention of seeking out adulation, and she sure as hell didn’t adopt her son for the sole purpose of keeping up with trends. 

(And boy, had _that_ one sent Steve into a raging tirade.)

She hadn’t removed her tear ducts, she hadn’t been created by her father to be the most highly functioning robot in existence, and she certainly wasn’t just inherently a sociopath. 

She could tell all manner of reporters or civilians this, and some might even believe her, but one thing that absolutely none of them would believe, was that she ever got scared. 

And okay, that was pretty much how Toni wanted it, to be honest. Ever since she’d been a little girl, showing any sign of weakness was nothing less than taboo, and fear was the greatest weakness of them all. _Never let ‘em see you sweat, Antonietta,_ Howard had barked at her once, twice, constantly. _Starks are made of iron. We don’t cave, we don’t fall, we don’t break. Not against anyone or anything and definitely not out of fear._

It had been something of a mantra to her, growing up, and so she’d learnt from a young age exactly how to spin the press. To make them see nothing more or less than exactly what she wanted them to see and what she needed them to see, and that had always been one simple thing: infallibility. 

If she was infallible, there was less of a chance that people would try to take advantage of her. They took a lot more shots, of course; there was some deeply rooted instinct in people that seemed to take a thrill out of trying to take down anything that didn’t seem possible to destroy; but people rarely tried to take her for a ride, which had proven invaluable when she’d first stepped up and taken over SI. 

That perceived indestructibility, along with her history of brilliance splashed out across the media, had lent her the reliability that she’d needed to smooth talk her way into the heart of the Board. Having their confidence backing her had given her the juice to make some of the more outlandish moves she’d made in her tenure as CEO, and those risky ventures had all culminated in turning SI into an international empire. 

So, yes. This idea that Toni was a soulless automaton was not entirely out of the realm of what she wanted. But someone had once said to be careful of the lies one told themselves, lest they begin to believe them to be true… and though Toni didn’t make a habit of paraphrasing Dostoyevsky to herself, there was no denying that those words had always rung close to home for her. 

She was not emotionless. She was not invulnerable. And that was okay. 

It had taken Steve months of diligent and patient reminding to get her to accept that, and still, Toni had her off days, but over the years, her boyfriend had given her the most priceless gift of understanding. He’d been steady as a rock whenever she’d found the courage to reach for him and caught her when she didn’t, and ended up taking a proverbial tumble because of it. 

He’d shown her that it wasn’t a weakness to give into her emotions, and taught her how to, in the same way. He held her when she woke up screaming against the demons in her head, and he held her when the pain got to be too much to keep from crying. He held her when she couldn’t stop trembling at the idea of her son being harmed in their line of work, and he held her when one of the team got hurt and she could barely stand for the guilt that ravaged her. He even held her when nothing more was wrong than a simply shitty day with an overbearing Board member or a difficult upgrade. And it made all the difference in the world. 

Now, she would have given anything to have Steve’s arms around her. 

Dragging in a breath that was just a little thinner than the ones before; hardly noticeable unless one had only partial function of their lungs; Toni closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the wall of rubble behind her. She had no intention of passing out – that head wound was not something she was willing to take a chance with – but her increasing difficulty with keeping memories of the cave in Afghanistan at bay, was hindering her ability to take slow, even breaths, which really just created an endless cycle of pain for the genius. Not to even mention that it would be in bad form to tell the kid not to panic when he woke up, while she was expressly panicking. 

It was against her better judgement, but Toni couldn’t help herself as she used shaky fingers to turn her helmet back on. The extra light illuminated the small space once more, throwing her injuries into sharp focus, and if there was anything to be grateful for, it was that the kid looked exponentially better. She’d done her best to shield him during the collapse, but bruises would have been impossible to identify in her first cursory check. Now, though, hours had passed and Maico still looked healthy and unharmed, if a little restless in his sleep the longer he stayed under. It was probably nearing time for him to wake him… how long had they even been down there, already? 

A quick check of her watch; because she didn’t possess the presence of mind to guestimate it; told Toni that they’d been under for just over eleven hours. That didn’t bode entirely well for her; on a rough calculation, based on her and the kid and the amount of oxygen they depleted on average, against the vague estimation of the size of the room, they had about 38 hours of air, but she had to consider the additional variable of their carbon dioxide outtake. For every breath they expelled, they were increasing the CO2 toxicity in their small space, and if her estimates were right, the hypercapnia would kill them before hypoxia did. Therefore, working on those numbers, their time was decreased, drastically, to about 23 hours.

Though the thought was so far from comforting, there was an element of working the numbers that steadied her nerves. Her hands were no longer shaking and her stomach wasn’t tying itself in knots, although getting in a breath was still difficult.

“Shall I open a private line to Captain Rogers, Madam?” JARVIS asked gently, and it said something about Toni’s mental state that she’d almost forgotten her beloved AI’s presence.

Fighting past the wave of initial, knee-jerk guilt, Toni nodded wearily. “That’d be great, J, thanks.” She shifted away from the kid, so as to use her body to block the light from the helmet, lest it wake him up. 

**“Hey, sweetheart.”** Steve’s soft voice had the instantaneous reaction of soothing her, like a wave of calm descending upon her. JARVIS must have alerted the Captain before patching her through, and Toni was grateful because she wasn’t sure she could have started the conversation this time around. 

Swallowing twice, she worked on finding her voice. “Hey,” was all she eventually managed, thanks in equal part to her physical inability to take a full breath, as well as her residual anxiety from the threat of flashbacks. 

And one of the things that she loved most about Steve, was his ability to recognize when she was nearing the end of her tether. He was the only one that she felt safe and comfortable enough with, to let her guard down and expose the cracks in her metaphorical armor, and he took that honor seriously by always somehow knowing just when she needed a boost or a shoulder. 

**“Close your eyes for me, my darling,”** Steve entreated, and for all that he’d probably meant to sound gentle, there was still an edge of desperate misery that pulled at Toni’s heartstrings. Part of her immediately resented that she’d been weak enough to call her lover, and subsequently caused him the pain of spectating her own pain, but the insistent voice in her head (that always sounded rather like Steve himself) repeated that there was only strength to be gained by the connection between them. Shutting all her thoughts up, Toni focused all her energy on listening to Steve, letting her eyes fall shut on a ragged exhale. **“I want you to think about that gala we all went to last Christmas. Remember it?”**

The memory that flashed across her eyes surprised a laugh out of her. It was weak, but fond and amused, and certainly better than her thoughts before that had been. “Are you kidding?” she asked rhetorically, voice teeming with adoration. “How could I forget?”

 

_“You look pretty, Mommy!”_

_Toni smiled at Peter through the mirror as she slicked on some lipstick, feeling it as her entire face turned soft with the gooey adoration that only her son and her boyfriend could bring out in her. Toni typically tried to resist making the face, if only for her reputation, but Peter had a knack for getting around her._

_Capping the dusky rose tube, she turned to face her son. “Thank you, sweet pea,” she replied, reaching down to deftly and gracefully lift the little boy on to the nearby chair. “And don’t you look handsome? My little Prince Charming,” she teased fondly, bopping his nose before she got to work smoothing his hair out of his eyes._

_“Princes are boring,” the little boy informed her, fidgeting absentmindedly as Toni loosened his tie and undid his top button. Honestly, she didn’t know why Pepper insisted on torturing her son with formal wear. Granted, it was an SI event, but Peter hardly needed to wear a tie, unless they were planning on letting him close his first deal tonight._

_Returning her attention to her son, Toni arched an amused eyebrow. “Is that so?” she asked mildly, and Peter was thankfully too young to detect the mirth that edged along her interested tone. “What would you rather be, if not a prince?”_

_“I wanna be a superhero!” Peter answered immediately, beaming up at her without a hint of reservation. “Like you and Daddy!”_

_It took considerable effort for Toni not to blanch like she wanted to – incidentally, the source of her son’s excitement was also the source of some of her nightmares – but through practice, she managed a strained little smile. “Why do you want that, Puppy?”_

_“Because I wanna save people.” Again, Peter’s answer came without hesitation, like he’d given it all a lot of thought before. And sure, Toni knew that he wanted to be like her and Steve; she’d even built him a replica of her gauntlet that had a flashlight in the middle instead of a repulsor, and a miniature shield; but she hadn’t realized that the child had given some serious thought to this. “We take care of family, right, Mommy?” he added expectantly, parroting the words back to her that she so often spoke. “If I become a superhero, I can fight with everyone. I can help, too.”_

_For a long moment, she could only study her son as he fiddled with his cufflinks (really, Pep? Cufflinks on a five year old?) with his tongue peeking out of the side of his mouth in concentration. Huffing audibly when they didn’t immediately pop out, the child aimed pleading brown eyes up at her and held out his sleeve wordlessly._

_The adorable action snapped her out of her numbing thoughts and Toni smiled softly as she carefully took them off. Pepper was going to glare at them both, later, but by this point it was almost ritual for Toni to undo whatever everyone else did if she thought Peter was uncomfortable. Honestly, Pep had to half expect it by now, at least._

_When she was done, she lifted him again and steadied him safely on the floor. “All set, il mio bambino,” she announced, making Peter giggle with the lilting Italian. He threw his arms around her in a fleeting hug, throwing out a thank you as he raced back towards the door, only to get caught and swung up into Bucky’s arms as he entered the room. (My baby.)_

_“Whoa, there, Squirt, where’re ya off… damn.” Bucky broke off halfway to utter the soft curse, eyes widening slightly as he ran an appreciative gaze over her. Snapping out of it, a suddenly impish smirk took over his features, and with amusement, Toni just knew that the former assassin was thinking up ways to irk Steve into a possible coronary over the course of the night. “Lookin’ spiffy, Shellhead.”_

_Toni snorted at the old slang. “A whole century’s worth of ways to sweep me off my feet, and you go with ‘Lookin’ spiffy’? Disappointing, Buck-o.”_

_“I was keepin’ it PG for the kid,” Barnes quipped back with a wink, making her grin and shake her head in fond exasperation._

_“What’s spiffy?” Peter piped up before she could make a retort, ceasing his wriggling as his interest piqued._

_Proving her suspicions entirely too right, Bucky put the little boy down with an innocent suggestion. “Go ask your dad, kiddo. Tell him Uncle Bucky called Mommy that.”_

_Toni’s voice was no match for a hyperactive 5 year old’s energy, so Peter was long gone before she could say anything otherwise. She tried to send the former Sergeant a look of reprimand, but it was ruined by the twitch of her lips when she caught the happy mischievousness that was making blue eyes sparkle. It was such a welcome change from the heaviness that had been weighing him down since he’d come to the tower that Toni simply couldn’t bring herself to take it away. But she could stick to her usual droll comments._

_“You know, I’d really rather prefer you leave my son out of your brotherly taunting,” she told him dryly, taking his offered arm and allowing Bucky to lead her out of her and Steve’s room. She had no need for an escort into her own event, but her ankle was still a little sore from the fight three hours earlier, where she’d stuck a difficult landing, and it was hardly conducive to high heels. She’d walk in them, no doubt, and she’d do it with the grace of a swan, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make it easier when the opportunity presented itself._

_Bucky grinned over at her, and Toni didn’t miss the cursory glance he flicked down at her shoes. Clearly, he’d come upstairs to check on her, and on the plus side, at least his sole intention hadn’t been to annoy her boyfriend. “If the kid tells him, it gives me a better chance of escapin’ with my life,” he replied mock solemnly, stepping to the side in order to let her in the elevator first. “It’s called self-preservation, doll.”_

_“I’m pretty sure it’s called child labour, in some places.”_

_“Whatever keeps me alive,” Bucky joked, and Toni rolled her eyes with a laugh._

_“Know what would also keep you alive?” she asked amusedly. “Not provoking a jealous super soldier when his girlfriend is about to spend the night schmoozing jerks and assholes in a dress that was specifically designed to maximize her assets.”_

_Of course, it was rare that Bucky ever took her words at the surface level they were meant to be taken on, and after a second, the man frowned in wariness. “Why are they jerks and assholes?” he asked guardedly, and Toni wasn’t sure whether to laugh or facepalm at his protectiveness. Steve was going to be bad enough, she absolutely didn’t need two super soldiers glaring at the smarmy douchebags that made up a great deal of the guest list. Smarmy though they may be, they all also played varying degrees of roles in SI. Nobody was irreplaceable, but that didn’t mean that Toni relished doing so._

_“Enjoy the food, mock everyone with the team, but don’t get involved with whatever I’m doing, Buck, trust me,” she cautioned him, choosing to be a little serious in the hopes that he would heed her words. “I can handle this world, I grew up in it.”_

_Whether he had an opinion on that or not, Toni never got to know, because as soon as the elevator doors opened, her escort was being yanked out of the elevator car by his ear, courtesy of a vaguely irritable blond super soldier. “Are you sure we can’t have him neutered?” Steve asked her almost petulantly, ignoring the objections of his best friend as Bucky broke out of the hold and rubbed his ear. Before she could answer, Steve flicked his gaze to her and subsequently got his fill of her dress. Those blue eyes darkened in a way that had desire simmering low in her belly, and her boyfriend quickly crowded her against the back of the elevator. JARVIS helpfully shut the door, disregarding Bucky’s protest, but all Toni could focus on was the way her lover claimed her lips in a deep and bruising kiss._

_“I take it you like the dress, then?” she asked breathlessly, when Steve finally broke away. Judging from the absolute heat in her boyfriend’s gaze, it wasn’t lost on him that she’d chosen a dress the exact same shade of blue as his eyes. It hugged her like a second skin until it fell softly around her legs, slit up to mid-thigh baring more skin than usual, but at the same time, less. Then of course, there was the dipping neckline that hid the arc just barely, but allowed its light to glow ethereally through the silky fabric._

_She’d had motives along these lines, she wasn’t ashamed to admit._

_Growling slightly, Steve kissed her again, this time nipping at her lip in playful reproach. “It’s going to be so hard not to knock out one of your associates tonight.”_

_“How about this?” Toni grinned salaciously, brown eyes sparkling. “If you manage not to, then once Peter is asleep, you and I can do that thing we did on our anniversary night. You know, with the…”_

_“I know.” Steve rumbled, catching her lips in another punishing kiss that told her exactly what he thought of that compromise. “I’ll behave.”_

_She laughed against his lips, pulling away only when JARVIS reopened the doors. “Good,” she winked, straightening his tie before taking up the customary Stark stance as it had once been drilled into her; head up, shoulders back, spine straight, and dazzling smile; and entering the fray of the party. As she always did, her entrance heralded attention just by virtue of the way she commanded the room, and it was that very moment that she knew the game was on. She couldn’t let any of her perfect façade slip._

_It was, however, a game that she was an old hand at, so it hardly fazed her. She worked the room and its occupants like the seasoned pro she was, flitting between crowds and holding court with people who couldn’t seem to help hanging on her every word like it was gospel._

_Unfortunately, for as much as an expert as she was, she also knew that there was always a chance of someone taking a different tack, and halfway through the night, that was exactly what happened._

_In one of her brief breaks from socializing, the inventor replenished her drink. As she leaned against the bar, an inexplicable pulse of unease came over her, and she took a second to scan the room, reassuring herself that her family was okay. Most of the Avengers were gathered at the other end of the room, conversing between themselves and other people who’d been bold enough to join in. Steve and Bucky were talking to a couple of people that Toni recognized as being from the same therapy group James was attending; included among the number, Sam Wilson, the therapist who was quickly becoming friends with Steve and something approaching it with Bucky. And her son… well, he was running across the room towards her, from where he’d been playing with some of the other guests’ kids, beaming as he waved at her with a gauntleted hand. He’d lost his jacket at some point; probably when he’d put the glove on; but he was obviously having fun, so it didn’t even occur to Toni object._

_“Having fun, munchkin?” she asked with a laugh, catching the little boy as he came at her with a flying hug. For a moment, she relished having him there and close; a piece of pure, absolute truth among an evening of deception; and it was enough to settle her fraying nerves._

_He nodded vigorously as he pulled back. “Uh-huh! Look at me, Mommy! I’m Iron Boy!” He flicked on the flashlight, a delighted smile near to splitting his face as he looked up at her._

_A voice from behind Peter interrupted Toni before she could respond. “Is it really wise to be teaching that kid to be the same murdering filth that you strive to be?” The voice was dripping with malice and disdain, clearly searching out a fight, and not for the first time, the genius wished that her instincts weren’t so spot on. And that her son wasn’t someplace that was anywhere else._

_Eyes flashing dangerously, Toni straightened, and smirked inwardly when the man took a step back at her look. “If you have an issue to take up with me, Sir, I’d suggest you do so without so much as referencing my son.”_

_He blustered slightly, but Toni could tell it was all false bravado. Her little boy, however, didn’t possess her keen ability to read people. Raising his gauntleted hand in a classic Iron Woman attacking pose, Peter glared up at the man with all the fierceness of a five year old._

_“Leave my Mommy alone!” he yelled, with a now-familiar conviction. Toni almost choked on a snort of laughter, especially when the man did a double take with surprise. “She’s a superhero!”_

_Gently, she took a soothing hold on Peter’s shoulder, lowering his hand while feathering a kiss against his cheek. “That’s my little superhero,” she murmured affectionately, before rising and ruffling his hair. “Thanks for the help, sweet pea. Now, I need you to go to Aunt Nat, alright?”_

_Nodding agreeably, Peter scampered towards the grinning redhead that had stepped forward at Toni’s unspoken behest, but not before shooting the man one more glare. By the time the genius faced him again, now satisfied with her son’s proximity from the proverbial blast zone, she had her usual backup there._

_Steve loomed over the nameless moron, far more threatening than their son had been and significantly angrier. “Do we have a problem here?”_

_“Not a one,” Toni interrupted smoothly, restraining her lover with a cautionary hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure this gentleman was just leaving.”_

_Steve’s muscles were taut underneath her fingers, and that told her what she needed to know; that he’d heard the comment which had started the whole exchange. Bucky, too, evidently, since he was flanking Steve and stepping forward now, to grab the man’s bicep._

_“Allow me to see you out,” he said flatly, and Toni knew that it was only her hand on Steve that was stopping the blond super soldier from following his best friend._

_Gently, she turned him to face her. “Deep breaths, Captain,” she advised softly, knowing from experience how displacing these kinds of situations could be. “He can’t touch me, not with words or otherwise. You know that.”_

_Without wasting time on a verbal reply, Steve took her lips in a harsh kiss. It was dominant and served more towards the purpose of possession than comfort, but it was what he needed at the moment; needed, to make a statement that he loved her and that she was his, the rest of the world be damned; and so she allowed it._

_“You’re stronger than I am,” he said gruffly when they broke apart, resting his forehead against her for a brief second, as if it was only the two of them in the room. “To be used to people spewing ridiculous hate like that,” he clarified, dragging himself away._

_She shook her head, pressing one last small kiss to the hollow at the bottom of his throat that was barely visible with his shirt. It was soft and understanding, meant to soothe rather than arouse, and it served its purpose as Steve deflated on a sigh._

_“Just more experienced,” she murmured with a half-smile, but the words were out of her mouth before she realized they were the entirely wrong ones to say._

_Blue eyes teemed with empathy and regret. “I won’t let them take any more shots at you,” he promised lowly. “I’ll…”_

_“Stand between me and everyone else for the rest of our lives?” Toni interjected, raising an eyebrow in an attempt to convey her distaste for that idea. Steve only set his jaw stubbornly, and the genius sighed, realizing that this was one of those times in the relationship where she probably needed to try to compromise. “Okay, how about this. If I ever need you to back me up, because I can’t handle something, I promise to you I’ll reach out my hand.”_

_Steve nodded slowly, mulling the idea over before gifting her with one of his usual, warm, soft smiles that formed a big part of the center of Toni’s world. “And I promise I’ll always be there to take it.”_

 

**“I made you a promise that day,”** Steve told her softly, love and softness in his voice that suddenly seemed like enough to fight against her current situation. **“It wasn’t limited to asshole reporters. I’m right here, baby, and I’m going to get you out of there. Trust me.”**

And that, Toni thought, that was actually the easiest part about this whole thing. “I do,” she replied without hesitation. “I trust you. And you’re coming for me, I know that.”

**“Good,”** her lover murmured, and Toni could almost picture the little smile on Steve’s face. **“I love you. Everything’s going to be okay.”**

She nodded reflexively, letting the words wash over her for a second and allowing herself to actually believe them. “I love you, Steve.”

And that was when the earth trembled and started to collapse around her. 

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! Sorry guys, it's evil, I know, but I promise more fluff is incoming, if that helps? *hides face*
> 
> Also, for interest's sake, the quote Toni is thinking of, is "Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him." - Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed this one! 
> 
> -J <3


	6. Plan H

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! 
> 
> A much quicker update than last time, because I had to get this out in time to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY TONY STARK! :D 
> 
> Also, I felt a little bad about the cliffie and didn't want to leave you guys hanging for too long XD Hope everyone enjoys! <3

Toni reacted instinctively, throwing herself over Maico and ordering JARVIS to open up the suit as rubble began to fall around them. Broken pieces of concrete and stone and metal was filling their little air bubble, destroying it, and she could only vaguely be aware of it when the little boy erupted into a crying jag. He clung to her, limiting her maneuverability, but through some miraculous feat, Toni managed to turn them around so she could put him in the suit. 

Which would have been a lot easier if Maico would let her go. 

“It’s okay, honey, it’s alright,” she tried to reassure him, desperation edging her voice. Abruptly, she remembered that he didn’t speak English, and almost threw her hands up in exasperation because it had been literal years since she’d forgotten to switch to someone else’s native tongue when talking to them. Maico screamed when a sizeable piece of concrete smashed dangerously close to them and Toni hastily forced her mind to provide the translations of what she was trying to say. “Everything’s going to be okay, little one,” she said firmly in rapid fire Spanish, fighting to maintain gentleness instead of snapping out orders like she would have with an adult. “I need you to go into here for me, okay? It’s my superhero suit, it will protect you.”

Maico scrambled in, much to Toni’s relief, but it was short-lived when he wouldn’t let go of her. “Stay!” he wailed, and Toni really didn’t blame him. He’d been so brave up until then, he was probably entitled to a terrified fit when what was presumably a tremor destroyed their safe zone around them. 

“I’m right here, honey, I promise,” she told him, and slipped away from him just long enough for the armor to close up around him. His resulting scream broke her heart, but at least he was safe. Without needing a prompt, because JARVIS was amazing like that, the suit immediately shifted to cover her as much as possible from the falling debris. When she was curled underneath it as much as she was able, she thumped a fist softly against the torso of the suit. Maico stopped screaming at the sound and Toni grabbed the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. “See? I’m right here, Maico, I didn’t leave. I’m here, sweetie, everything’s going to be okay.” 

She kept the mindless reassurances up, Maico’s sobs softening but not ending, until pain shot through her right arm. It took incredible restraint not to cry out but she managed it, not wanting to scare the kid any more than he already had been. Those good intentions, however, were abruptly waylaid by her ill-advised attempt to yank her injured arm closer to herself. White-hot pain ricocheted through her body, and a dull roar in her ears was her only warning before she blacked out. 

 

_”Hey, a shooting star!”_

_Toni raised an eyebrow and sent Steve her most dry, disbelieving look. “Are you even serious right now?” she asked, half-worried that the man was, in fact, totally earnest in his belief in shooting stars._

_“Well, yeah,” Steve laughed, a throaty sound that she never got tired of hearing. He tilted his head to meet her look with an amused and unabashed one of his own. “My Ma used to tell me all the time when I was a kid, to wish on a shooting star and it would come true.”_

_Toni smiled slightly and shook her head, but she didn’t mock him any further. After the months they’d spent getting closer, becoming friends, and then becoming best friends, she knew just what it meant to Steve when he spoke about his mother. It was something she could relate to, so she didn’t want to give him any reason to feel chagrined when he mentioned her._

_Still, she couldn’t help commenting. “You are too precious for this world, Steven Grant Rogers.”_

_“And you,” he grinned playfully, “are far too jaded, Antonietta Stark.”_

_Toni snorted slightly, lifting herself up to a seated position on the blanket that they’d spread out on the roof of the Tower. It still amazed her sometimes, that her sleepless nights lost to nightmares were now frequently spent star-gazing and talking to Steve, who she’d once thought she was doomed to hate and be hated by, but mostly, she just felt happy and grateful for it. In these moments, quiet and personal with her best friend, there was never anywhere else she wanted to be. Which was saying a lot, coming from a billionaire who had the power to be anywhere on the goddamn planet._

_She blamed this ease and comfort between them, for what she thoughtlessly volunteered next. “Elena.”_

_“Hmm?”_

_“My middle name,” she clarified, without taking her eyes off the blanket of stars above them. In her periphery, she saw Steve’s gaze snap towards her face, but Toni carefully didn’t react. “Antonietta Elena Stark.”_

_As if he sensed how rare it was for her to willingly share anything about herself; which was likely, since he knew her non-verbal tells pretty well, even after only a few months; Steve paused for a few beats before offering a response. “Pretty,” was all he said by way of an opinion. “What does it mean?”_

_“It’s uh…” she shook her head a little as she searched through the recesses of her memories. “It’s Italian for ‘light of the sun’, I think.” Well, she knew, because her memories were never wrong, and her mother had explained her name’s meaning, but she was past the point where she felt like showboating her intelligence with Steve. “My mother picked it.”_

_Steve shifted upright so that his shoulder leaned against hers companionably. “Your mother was Italian?”_

_Usually, it took a lot more than a scenic moment and a good friend for Toni to talk about her mother. Indeed, the closest she’d come to it was a few years ago, when she’d gotten completely trashed on the anniversary of her mother’s birthday and told Rhodey about the time that she’d built a rotating shelf for her mother’s shoes for Mother’s Day. At which point, she’d passed out in Rhodey’s arms and spent the rest of the night half in his lap, dead asleep._

_Something was different with Steve, though. The earnest way that he asked, like he really wanted to know instead of just wanting Toni to talk about it. The understanding look in his eyes, because he knew what it was like to have his life shaped by his mother, only to lose her. Or maybe it was just the shoulder against hers that warmed her, reminded her that she wasn’t alone and didn’t have to be, just then._

_Either way. She began to speak._

_“She was. The archetypal Italian beauty, with brains and feistiness to boot. It was easy to see why my dad had fallen in love with her, because she had this way about her… when I was a little girl, I used to think that everything she did was like music,” Toni confessed, huffing a laugh at the memory of her own childish thoughts. Glancing at Steve, she saw that he was smiling, soft and happy, and Toni idly thought it was nice that he was smiling so often these days. “I remember, when she talked, for the longest time I thought Italian was just music that she spoke instead of sung.”_

_“Whoa, wait.” The super soldier shook his head, incredulity coming over his face but somehow still retaining the smile. “Why did she talk to you in Italian?”_

_Toni shifted a little on the blanket, turning to face Steve instead of the sky. They usually ended up like this, on nights when they talked more than they star-gazed. “It was her first language. I guess she wanted to teach it to me, so she spoke it to me. I was fluent by the time I was four,” she added, not to brag so much as to prove her mother’s point._

_“Of course you were,” Steve rolled his eyes, reaching up to gently tap her head in demonstration of her genius. She grinned smugly and got a laugh and a hair ruffle for her trouble. “Did Howard speak it, too?”_

_As it always did, the mention of her father tensed Toni right back up. She hated talking about the man on her best days, but at times like this? When she was relaxed and happy and in the perfect moment with a best friend that she could never have dreamed of having, talking about her mother and the few happy memories she had? Those were the times when Toni hated the intrusion of Howard Stark the most. It was like he was some kind of ghost, haunting every good moment and thought with his sinister presence._

_Of course, Steve still thought of the man as an old friend, so she couldn’t exactly say any of that. “He didn’t need to,” she answered instead, fixing her eyes on the sky and affecting a breezy tone. “He hated being out of the loop when my mother and I talked, but other than that, Italian had no use for him. Stark Industries only expanded internationally after I took over the company.”_

_For a moment, the pause between them grew a bit uncomfortable, as if the super soldier could sense what rocky terrain they were occupying all of a sudden. Before Toni could build any of her defenses back up, though, the silence was broken._

_“You’ll have to teach me some of it, one day,” Steve murmured, reaching over and brushing back a tendril of her hair unnecessarily. Nevertheless, Toni leaned into his touch as the Captain brushed a thumb along her jaw. “I like the idea of sounding like music to you.”_

_She shot him a smile, marveling at how Steve somehow always knew exactly what to say, and deciding against telling him that he already sounded like something musical to her, no matter what he said. “Lo prometto,” she replied, just as quietly, basking in the warmth of the grin he sent back at her. “It means ‘I promise’.”_

_“Just like music.”_

 

She clawed her way back to consciousness as a childish voice permeated her awareness.

“Miss Toni?” Maico called out fearfully, presumably frightened by her momentary silence. His fear cut her to the bone, making her swallow viciously in an attempt to speak through the pain. Thankfully, she was spared any further unexpected incidences when the tremors suddenly came to a halt, rubble settling into place but otherwise falling quiet around them. 

With no small amount of effort, she managed a weak, “Still here, honey. You’re okay, we’re both okay. Just stay still for a sec, okay?”

She didn’t get an answer, but she didn’t expect to. Biting her lip until it threatened to split gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her screaming arm, and after a few dizzying moments, she managed to maneuver herself enough to assess the damage. 

A piece of a beam, previously held in place with rubble, had tumbled into their space and pierced through her bicep. Thankfully, the rest of it was being held in place by large chunk of cement, so it hadn’t gone all the way through, but the impact had hit with enough force to break through her skin in a deep gouge, if the thick, red blood sluggishly slicking down her arm was enough to go by. And the pain. Sweet lord, the pain. 

Coaching herself to breathe through it; because she’d certainly had worse; Toni consoled herself with the knowledge that the beam hadn’t hit an artery, and she wasn’t in too much immediate danger. She could tell, because the wound was bleeding slowly rather than gushing, and judging from the small amount of mobility she still had in her arm, there probably wasn’t muscle damage either. In all likelihood, she’d just need a few sutures and possibly a sling, if Steve or Rhodey or Bucky or Bruce had anything to say about it. Her chances of getting away without one did not look promising. 

Of course, the one big problem was that it would hinder her movement trying to get out. 

“JARV, feel like slicing me out, here?” she muttered, low enough that she hoped the kid wouldn’t hear her. Compliantly, and without the reprimand she’d expected from her AI, the suit lifted an autopiloted gauntlet and shot off a quick blast. The heat from the proximity made her grit her teeth, but the effect was beneficial and two-fold; not only did it break off the piece of the beam so that she wasn’t pinned anymore, it also cleared away some of the debris to widen their space, thankfully without causing any collapses. 

She hadn’t factored in the aftershocks. Not because she hadn’t considered them, but because they’d been happening on and off the entire day without effect. But the Avengers moving the rubble combined with an already precarious structure and a slightly more powerful aftershock? It shouldn’t have surprised her that this happened. Momentarily, she berated herself for making the supposition that the aftershocks couldn’t get worse than what they’d had. After a main shock as big as the one they’d had, she should have worked on the assumption that a powerful tremor was working its way to them. 

Well. No use crying over spilt milk. Or, she eyed her arm distastefully, blood, as it were. 

Using her teeth and her left hand, she ripped off her button-up blouse that had once been fitting, tasteful and pearl white, and used it to clumsily wrap her bicep. The white cotton tank top she was wearing underneath, which had somehow also gotten dust and grime on it, would probably have absorbed the blood better, but the thought of raising her arms long enough to get out of it was painful in and of itself. 

Satisfied with her triage, given the distinct lack of equipment, space and time, Toni turned her attention to the suit and the boy still contained in it. The wires connecting to the comm system had escaped their makeshift ports, which explained why she wasn’t hearing Steve’s frantic voice in the confines of their little bubble despite the suit still being functional, but she couldn’t focus on the fix for that because her attention was stolen by the kid. Maico was still sniffling softly and the inventor hastened to flip the catches of the manual release so that she could ease him out instead of the suit dropping him out. 

“Hey, honey,” she tutted gently, forehead creasing in empathy as Maico only reached out for her. Biting back the pain in her arm, she pulled him on to her lap, allowing him to curl himself into as small a ball as he could manage so as to cling to her. Wrapping both arms around him, she rocked them gently from side to side, the way she did when Peter had one of his more vivid nightmares and refused to so much as look at anyone else, or even entertain the notion of letting Toni out of his sight. This was familiar to her, at least, and it didn’t rankle as much as she thought it might, that her powers were limited to being motherly at a time when she thought she should have figured a way out by then. “You’re alright, sweetheart, I’m sorry I had to do that, okay? I’m so sorry.”

Maico shook his head, but it felt more like he was just trying to bury himself closer to her with the movement. “I want to go home,” he whimpered, and those five words flashed her right back to her son’s tearful plea from a few hours ago. 

_I want you to come home._

She’d never been very good at saying no to Peter, or to kids in general her entire life, because she couldn’t stand to disappoint them. She knew all too well what it felt like to be disappointed, had known the feeling since she was far too young to even properly comprehend it, and she’d never been keen on letting other kids feel that before they absolutely had to. 

And really, hadn’t her inherent desire not to disappoint, kind of given way to her innate recklessness in the first place? 

That was totally her defense for employing Plan H. The H being for Hell in a Handbasket, of course.

“Alright, sweetie, we’re gonna get you home, okay?” she promised softly, gratified when the words made Maico look up at her with heartbreakingly earnest hope and trust in his eyes. “You’re going to have to close your eyes and trust me, honey, can you do that for me?”

Maico nodded fervently and threw his arms around her again. “We’re really gonna go home?”

“You are,” Toni reiterated, and hoped that the eight-year-old was too tired and afraid to hear what she deliberately wasn’t saying. That she couldn’t guarantee anything about herself. “But I need you to go back into my superhero suit, okay?” 

There was a lot to be said about the kid’s bravery – and though she wouldn’t realize it until much later, even more to be said about his implicit trust and faith in her – that Maico only hesitated for a brief moment before nodding decisively and climbing back into the armor. 

Smiling slightly, she dipped forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You really are the ‘one with strength’, Maico. Your mama named you just right,” she told him softly, ruffling his hair. 

“Miss Toni?” Maico ventured softly just before she could issue the command to close up the armor. She hummed slightly in an invitation for him to continue, and felt her heart melt when he told her shyly, “I don’t think your name means ‘one who talks a lot’. I think it means ‘real good as a mama’.”

Unable to say anything to that, because she didn’t know what to say, nor did she have the ability to speak at all, Toni simply pressed another kiss to his forehead, fighting against the stinging in her eyes. Once he was safely ensconced in the armor, she took her helmet and prepared to leave a recording for Steve. 

Just in case. 

 

###

 

Steve had redefined his understanding of fear the moment Toni’s gasp had been cut off from the comms, and everything went to shit around him. 

Impulse had nearly thrown him right into the dent they’d made of the collapsed building, but it was a combination of Bucky and Rhodes, of all people, who’d pulled him back and dragged him to a spot of relative safety behind the floodlights that a construction crew had set up to help them continue their rescue efforts. 

As soon as the particularly vicious aftershock was done, and Steve caught a glimpse of the way that the building had further collapsed in on itself, he rounded on the two men with him. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he snarled unintelligibly at them, logic and reason obliterated by the sheer terror coursing through his veins, because he had no way of telling what the last few seconds had been like for his girl. Distantly, he recognized that he owed them his life, but Toni was more valuable than that to him and they had just stood by and watched as she was buried underneath debris. 

Realizing as he did that Steve was acting on emotion, Bucky didn’t retaliate, although the tightly sealed lips and clenched fists wasn’t lost on the Captain. Rhodes had far less grace than his best friend, on the other hand, and had no issue with flipping up his faceplate and getting in Steve’s space right back. 

“Hmm,” Rhodes pretended to think, “I don’t know, maybe I just had this crazy urge to play tag with you in the middle of an aftershock? Or could it be, and this is just a wild guess here, that _you’re not actually fucking indestructible and cannot survive a building collapse with some leather and a shield?!”_

Steve wanted to lunge for the man; wanted to demand to know why today, of all days, Rhodes was putting his safety above Toni’s; but he was intercepted by Bucky grabbing his biceps and shaking him once, forcing him to look at the brunet. 

His best friend fixed him with a fierce look. “Get it together, punk!” he snapped out in a drill sergeant type voice that forced Steve to listen. “You wouldn’t have been any good to us buried underneath that too, you wouldn’t have been able to help Toni that way! Use your goddamn head!”

And fine, that was damn well easy for Bucky to say, wasn’t it?! It wasn’t the love of his life trapped under there, it wasn’t his whole world that was in danger and hurt and afraid and needing him! Toni had called, she’d reached out like she’d promised, and Steve had sworn to her that he would get her out of the nightmare she was trapped in, and how was he supposed to do that if everyone else who claimed to want to help, stopped him from doing that?!

 _Uncalled for, darling,_ a cautioning voice in his head that sounded a lot like Toni pointed out. _They’re just more objective than you right now._ He wondered what it said about him, that the voice of reason in his head sounded like his lover and so was pretty much the only one he would listen to, but Steve didn’t care either way. His consciousness/inner Toni voice was right and he would have regretted a blow up like that, especially knowing how everyone in their family loved Toni. Because he had to, Steve took a few minutes to calm himself down and clear his head.

“I’m no happier about this than you are,” Rhodes told him abruptly, as soon as Steve calmed down and managed to meet their eyes again. His anguished eyes deviated from the hardness of his expression as he looked at the renewed rubble. “If I thought letting you get buried would have helped her, I’d have done that, but all it would have done was ensure that she would kick all our asses when she’s topside.”

The truth in that statement extinguished the worst of Steve’s panicky rage. There was no guarantee that he would have been able to unearth himself from the spot so that they wouldn’t have to keep digging, and the odds were good that he would have hurt himself in the process, which would have stopped him from the rest of the efforts to save Toni. Not to mention that his girlfriend definitely would have had all their asses if Steve had pulled a stunt like that and she’d gotten wind. Toni hid hers a lot better than he did, but she was equally as protective of him as he was of her. He knew that for a fact; he’d seen it up close and personal, after all…

 

_Steve awoke to cold._

_For one, heart-stopping moment, he had the fleeting thought that he was back in the ice, and irrational terror consumed him. Since waking up, since joining and leading the Avengers, and especially since getting together with Toni, he’d had the enduring fear of one day going back under ice and waking up another few decades later; of losing friends, again, of losing allies and hopes and dreams and a future with the girl he loved, until he just kept waking up alone with nothing but his shield at his side. PTSD, Toni had called it when he’d confessed these fears to her, under the cover of darkness as they’d shared another sleepless night on top of Stark Tower. No… the Avengers Tower, now. Toni had done exactly what she’d said she would, housed them all as a team and as a family more recently._

_If he was back in the ice, he was going to lose his family all over again. He would lose Toni._

_And well, he’d lost out on his chance before, his chance with another brunette. But that last thought he’d had of losing Peggy, just before he’d crashed that plane, it wasn’t nearly as painful as the thought, now, of losing Toni. Peggy had been his first love, no doubt about it, but Toni… she was the love of his life. Sure they’d only been dating for a few weeks, but he’d known even before they’d gotten together that Toni Stark was it for him. She was his life, his breath, the beat of his heart. She was his everything._

_He remembered reading something: ‘Your first love lasts only as long as it takes to find the love of your life.’ Steve couldn’t remember the author’s name, or even where he’d read it, because all he could think of was the fact that he hadn’t told any of this to Toni yet. He was going to lose her without ever having told her that he wouldn’t love anyone as much as he loved her._

_But before he could lose himself completely to his own phobias, the sound of a door wrenching open to his right commanded his attention. Glazed blue eyes slid over to the entrance, only to turn ablaze as fury and adrenaline cleared some of the fog from his drug-dazed mind._

_Toni._

_A date, he remembered distantly. They’d been walking back home from a date when they’d been ambushed, a metric shit ton of tranqs pumped into his body from some long-range weapon. Steve wasn’t sure how many hours had passed since, but his girlfriend was bruised, battered, and clad in nothing more than her bra, jeans and high heels. Whether they’d taken her shirt and jacket as a psychological torture or to expose her to the cold, Steve wasn’t sure. He only knew that he was going to kill every last one of the miserable bastards._

_Two burly men dragged the inventor into the room, shackles manacled tight around her wrists, and threw her carelessly to the floor. She was shivering, pale, and her lips had a worrisome blue tint to them, but what struck Steve the hardest was the fact that she wasn’t putting up a fight as the guards yanked the shackles, attaching the chain to some sort of hook and pulley system that Steve couldn’t identify._

_Growls permeated the air around them, and it took a second for Steve to realize that they were coming from him, loud and threatening despite the gag they’d outfitted him with. He struggled fruitlessly against the reinforced chains that wrapped around him like a vice, securing him to the bolted down steel chair he’d been propped on. For full view of the room, and full view of Toni, he realized grimly, yanking at the restraints until they cut into him._

_The guards only laughed and made a point of looking at him when they reached out and pulled a small lever that Steve hadn’t noticed; with the unmistakable grinding of gears and a muted gasp of pain from Toni, the mechanism pulled the chains taut, not stopping until Toni was hanging suspended by her arms._

_Pain rippled over her features, and Steve could see why; aside from her own weight putting a strain on her arms from the gravitational pull, the position pulled at her midsection and subsequently, the arc. More to the point, Steve could see distinct impressions of boot prints against the bruises splattered over her abdomen and cracked, if not broken, ribs were awfully dangerous without being strained like that._

_God, he was going to **eviscerate** them. _

_Toni’s head was down and she wasn’t saying anything; which Steve realized a moment later, was more out of necessity than anything else. Her breathing was erratic and sounded like it took enormous effort to drag into her lungs, not helped by the violent shivers that rocked her body from the cold._

_He, on the other hand, was still fully clothed even despite his generally elevated body temperature. It was just another form of mental torture, he knew that; forcing him to watch his love succumb to hypothermic shock while he was perfectly safe from its physical effects; but it was still effective. Steve couldn’t help desperately wishing that he could take Toni in his arms. Keep her warm, keep her safe._

_“Your resistance is admirable, Miss Stark.” Steve’s gaze snapped away from his battered girlfriend back to the door, narrowing his eyes when he saw the man that was presumably behind the whole kidnapping affair. Even straight-backed and seemingly imperturbable, he still exuded an air of insanity, something that filled the super soldier with unease, especially since the man wouldn’t take his eyes off Toni even long enough to glance at Steve. “Truly, you are a remarkable specimen of human strength and resilience, a paragon of heroism, even…”_

_“Cut the fanboy routine,” Toni interrupted him, somehow managing to convey detached disinterest with a voice that was ragged and strained. “I don’t date groupies.”_

_Through the maelstrom of emotions clogging his chest, Steve could still feel a flare of pride for his feisty girlfriend. It eased something in him fractionally to know that she was still fighting; to know that she was still unyielding to these assholes._

_The man twitched almost imperceptibly, and Steve realized that the standoffish tone from Toni was pushing a button for him. He was relatively sure that his girlfriend was doing it on purpose, but to what end, exactly?_

_Ruffled, the man took a few steps into the room. “No, you don’t,” he agreed with a sneer. “You date pretty boy super soldiers. But perhaps I can change your mind about him.” He flicked his head towards Steve, still without deigning to glance at him, and the guards began to cross the room to him._

_“No.” Just the one word, but it left Toni’s mouth with such reverberating command that even the guards faltered in their steps. Steve flicked his gaze over to her and actually felt a frisson of fear slither down his spine when he saw the brown eyes he loved so much turn almost black with a look that swore retribution if her words were unheeded. Though she was the one hanging from her wrists and beaten bloody, Steve suddenly got the impression that she was the most dangerous person in the room. The barely restrained fury that sent a quiver through her body was enough to warrant a second thought by the guards, who stopped in place and looked between Steve and Toni, and each other._

_The man blustered slightly, and made an irritated motion for the guards to get moving, but before they could comply, Toni added coldly, “If any of you make a move on him, I swear to God you’ll regret it.”_

_Steve could tell that the sentence took a lot from Toni, stealing her hard-earned breath, but he assumed that he was the only one who realized it, thanks to his enhanced hearing. Outwardly, the genius had enunciated each word with chilling clarity, body locked down to eliminate any visible signs of her discomfort like shivers or flinches of pain. The picture of control and deadliness._

_And it worked._

_Though he was still fuming and still fully intended on exacting his own form of retribution for every mark on Toni that hadn’t been there before this, Steve had to admit impressed defeat to his lover. He supposed when one expected temper, like from him, it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as temper from the one person in the world who appeared to be perpetually unflappable._

_“Idiots,” Toni griped breathlessly when the door fell shut behind them. Now out of their sight, the genius’ walls came down, and Steve bit back a hurt sound when her features contorted in obvious pain and his girlfriend audibly struggled for air._

_Despising the gag that prevented him from offering any comfort, Steve tried to convey his regret and remorse and concern through intense blue eyes. Toni caught it and rolled her eyes slightly, but there was an affectionate smile quirking her lips. “Put the puppy eyes… away,” she told him breathlessness becoming more pronounced as she begun to swing herself back and forth. Steve frowned, wanting to snap out an order for her to stop aggravating her own injuries, or something to that effect, but his entire expression melted into amazement when Toni lifted her legs in an incredible show of flexibility and core strength, folding her body practically in half until her feet strained up towards her manacled hands. Delicate, but trembling fingers reached out and painstakingly drew a piece of long, thin metal from the top of the heeled shoe, and maybe it was a good thing that Steve was gagged because he honestly had no clue what to say to that._

_“They always… forget the shoes,” Toni grinned triumphantly, lowering her legs slowly, presumably in an attempt to minimize the pain from the pull in her ribs. With shaky movements, courtesy of the cold, she inserted the pick into the small lock along the manacles, and with a few low scrapes of metal against metal, the cuffs gave way._

_Steve tensed as Toni fell, but she landed soundlessly even with the heels, akin to a cat. She wasted no time crossing the room to him and getting started on his chains, but he could see the pain she was still feeling in the shaking of her hands; the shivering of her body; the way she hunched in on the one side of her ribs._

_Forcing himself to stay still until she managed to pick his locks was torture, but as soon as he was free, Steve ripped off his leather jacket and bundled Toni in it, pulling her into his chest as if he could keep her there forever. Make sure that nothing ever touched her again._

_Toni struggled half-heartedly against him. “Put it… back on,” she tried to convince him even through her chattering teeth. “We’ll go… find my shirt and jacket… but I… you hate the cold,” she settled on, body wracked with another tremor._

_“You. Are. Amazing.” Steve punctuated each word with a kiss, one to each cheek and the last to her lips, which were frozen and chapped. “And you’re the love of my entire goddamn life,” he added, boring a serious gaze into her so that she understood it wasn’t just the adrenaline of the situation talking. “You saved us, sweetheart. Your part’s done, now you’ve gotta just let me finish things up, okay?”_

_Maybe it was fatigue and pain, or maybe it was because she was dazed by his words. Steve liked to think it was just because Toni trusted him so much that she would leave her life in his hands without a second thought. Either way, his beautiful genius only nodded agreeably, dropping her head against his chest._

_“Okay, hot stuff. Hey, can we… get a cheeseburger… on the way home?”_

 

Contrary to popular expectation, adopting Peter hadn’t softened Toni in that regard, not in the least. If anything, she became even more protective of everyone, although she generally hid it very well until it was brought out by the heat of the moment. 

So, although it rankled him to admit it, Rhodes was probably right. Bucky, too. They’d pulled him out of a situation that he perhaps hadn’t thought all the way through, but the fact remained that they were now starting from scratch. They had no idea how the rubble had formed, or how far buried Toni and the kid were buried, or... or even if they were…

Scrubbing a hand viciously over his face, as if that would erase the thought and therefore make it unable to be true, Steve rasped, “We need a plan. We need to regroup, figure out how to get to her and how much time we have to do it in.”

Bucky nodded once, but Rhodes only stomped past him, the armor making the feat far more impressive than if it had just been the man. Without a word, the super soldiers followed, both of them knowing without saying that it wasn’t worth the fight in this moment. In this point in time, when every second counted, when it meant the difference between getting Toni back and… not. 

They were joined by Bruce, who was already wielding information dug up on his tablet. “We don’t actually have any way to predict when the next aftershock will hit, and how powerful it will be,” the doctor wasted no time in relaying to them, grim-faced. “We have neither the equipment nor the tech, and even JARVIS’ estimates would be rough, at best.” 

“I don’t understand,” Bucky cut in, looking a little perplexed. “I thought JARVIS did these kinds of crazy calculations all the time?”

Rather than Bruce, it was the AI who responded, voice kind. “Indeed, Sergeant Barnes, however I am most generally the vessel with which Miss Stark conducts the calculations.”

“You’re forgetting that Toni is the genius behind JARVIS,” Rhodes added, completely unhelpfully, but since Steve wasn’t really in the frame of mind to explain something he was only half sure he understood himself, the super soldier didn’t judge.

Thankfully, Bruce stepped in. “Think of it like a calculator,” the scientist explained, and the logic and facts looked like it was helping ease the green tint from his veins. Small blessings. “JARVIS can only do the calculations because Toni inputs the knowledge, or codes cues into him. Without her at the helm, he can make educated guesses based on the research that his servers have access to, but he won’t be able to give us a specific window because there’s nobody to enter the data for the calculations.”

“Alright, semantics behind JARVIS aside,” Steve held up a hand, hoping to preempt any questions. Toni could just damn well answer them herself when she was safe. “Why hasn’t she connected back to us?”

Since he hadn’t directed the question at anyone in particular, the AI answered. “My sensors are unable to detect a telecommunication signal from the iteration of the suit currently occupied by Miss Stark,” he answered promptly, but not without a phantom heaviness to the words. It didn’t surprise Steve when he heard the telltale sounds of Bruce’s breathing techniques and the low cussing from Bucky. 

What did surprise him, however, was the sudden explosion of rubble behind him and the achingly familiar sound of repulsor boots. 

Hope burst through his chest as he whirled around to see the suit, banged and dented and more than a little damaged, but functional. As it began a very slow and careful descent to the ground, Steve distantly heard flashes going off from what seemed like a thousand cameras at once, and the voices of reporters.

“She’s alive! But, oh, it seems the Iron Woman, Miss Toni Stark, has once again put her own interests above that of another’s,” was the clearest and closest voice Steve heard. “What else are we to expect from a woman who parades around acting like a defender, as if the entirety of her life before the creation of the Iron Woman suit wasn’t spent profiteering from death and destruction? A purported Avenger though she may be, today we see the truth as a young boy’s life is tragically lost thanks to the self-absorbed machinations of the one we call a superhero.”

Steve’s first reaction was to crush the camera and the microphone of the reporter spouting all that bullshit about his girlfriend, but it was overshadowed by sudden realization. 

The kid wasn’t anywhere in sight. And the suit could only fit one person.

Something heavy dropped into Steve’s gut and he knew, all at once, that something was terribly, terribly wrong. The suit landed softly on the ground in front of them, but when nobody came rushing out, it was enough to confirm Steve’s worst suspicions. 

Even before the suit gently retracted from the small, trembling form of an eight-year-old boy. 

A woman burst through the crowd from his left, incoherent and sobbing, and scooped up the little boy as the suit deposited him gently to the ground. The kid’s mother, he assumed, judging from her wails and the way the little boy clung to her, crying his own relief and happiness. She pulled back only to press kisses to his face wherever she could reach, and though it was a heartwarming reunion, Steve just couldn’t find it in himself to feel any joy for it. 

Distantly, he was of course happy for them, but at the forefront of his moment was the leaden weight in his stomach that got heavier with every step he took towards the empty armor. He wasn’t even sure what he was hoping to find, but Rhodes seemed to share his idea, the armored man stepping forward with him while Bucky tried to coax Bruce into some semblance of control. 

They respectfully stepped aside from the weeping mother and son and begun their examination of the battered remains of the armor. It had been far more damaged than his initial assessment; from the exposed mass of wires near the helmet, it was obvious that Toni had had to scavenge it to make it meet her needs down there; and Steve didn’t need to be a tech genius to know that the suit was useless to them right now. Even if they could use the override for JARVIS to pilot it, it simply wasn’t roadworthy, to use one of Toni’s popular metaphors. 

With them being distracted, it had been easy for a reporter to sneak past the barrier, and unlike him and the Lieutenant Colonel, she didn’t have any qualms intruding on a tender family moment. 

“Mrs. Navarro, can you tell us what it was like to be forced to leave the safety of your son in the hands of the most notorious mass murderer of our generation, and the most cold and uncaring women the world has ever known?” 

That snapped his attention to where the reporter, who’d spewed all that filth about Toni before, was now honed in on the little family of two. The way Rhodes’ spine stiffened, he knew enough of Spanish to understand what she was saying, too, and Steve started towards them to put an end to the slanderous words against his girlfriend. There had been enough times when he’d been forced to sit back and watch as the press tore into Toni just because she made herself an available target to protect everyone else, and he wasn’t about to let that happen again. Not now, when she’d done what he would have never had the strength to let her do, if he’d been given the choice. Not now, when she’d risked everything to do the right thing and save an innocent little boy. 

But apparently, the defense of Toni’s honor was well in hand with aforementioned little boy, who kinda reminded him a lot of their own son. 

The kid pulled away from his mother long enough to glare fearsomely at the reporter. “Stop it! Stop saying those mean things!” he demanded, yelling as Peter was wont to do in order to make his point, and loud enough to catch the attention of the rest of the crowd of reporters. “Miss Toni is the best superhero in the whole world, and she’s a real nice Mama too! She was real brave and she didn’t let me go or let me get hurt, not even a scratch! You don’t know anything!”

Though the little boy’s Spanish was slow and juvenile enough for Steve to understand, his mother’s ensuing words to the reporter were too fast and sophisticated for him to keep up with, having not practiced enough to be fluent like Toni. “What’s she saying, JARVIS?” he asked the AI quietly, and almost immediately, JARVIS began to translate the woman’s words in his earpiece. 

_“…right to assault my son like this, after he’s been through so much!”_ She was snarling, imposing in her own right, in that unique way that seemingly, only a mother could manage. _“And you have no right to speak a word against the woman who saved his life, either! If that is all that you require from either of us, I’d suggest you cut your losses and write a different story, because you will never hear me saying a single thing against Toni Stark. She’s saved my heart and my soul, today.”_

Steve swallowed, guilt at his previous thoughts making him wince internally. Intellectually, he knew that he wasn’t grudging the woman her son’s life – only lamenting and fearing for his lover’s – but he couldn’t help feeling like he was letting Toni down with his thoughts. Toni, who had the heart of a hero and a mother, and still found the strength to stand against the people who believed otherwise. 

Before he could fall too deep into those thoughts, Steve felt a tap against his shoulder. “JARVIS is picking up something stored on the servers of the suit,” Rhodes explained when he turned around to face the man. If Steve didn’t know any better, he’d say that the Lieutenant Colonel had softened his voice just a little, as though he’d heard Steve’s guilt-ridden thoughts. But that didn’t seem likely. “My biometric didn’t have access rights, but I’d bet a pretty penny yours does.”

And he would win, too. Steve remembered Toni telling him once, during one of their many shared nights in her workshop, that she was coding his biometric and voice signatures to have access to everything in the tower and to all her tech. He recalled it so distinctly because it had been the first real, implicit show of trust in him on her part, and he also recalled promising her and himself that he would never take any sort of liberties or advantage of the privilege. As it were, he had hardly ever used the access to her tech, but if ever there was an extenuating circumstance…

Trying to psych himself up internally, Steve walked back to the armor, feigning calm. He only hesitated for a split second before identifying himself. 

The armor flickered to life. 

What was waiting for him on there? 

 

###

 

Rhodey had known from the moment the rubble had exploded behind him, that Toni wasn’t in the suit. 

It wasn’t an intrinsic, bone-deep kind of knowing; not the kind of ‘I can feel it in my veins, she’s not in there’ type of knowing, or that educated guess type of knowing based on the trajectory of the flight or whatever, like Toni sometimes did; but the kind of knowing that came from decades of being best friends. Of being family. Rhodey knew the genius in the same way that he knew himself, and so he could say with unimpeachable certainty that Toni Stark would walk to her own execution before letting a little boy die on her watch. 

Hell, she might just have done. 

Rogers, on the other hand… well, he’d had faith. Jim had seen the way the man’s face had lit up with optimism and hope and damn if he didn’t actually feel bad for the Captain when the suit had revealed no Toni in sight. 

Sure, he hated the guy and thought he wasn’t nearly good enough for Toni, but he wasn’t heartless, damn. 

Thing was, he knew firsthand how it felt. He’d been dealing with Toni being in danger, not since she took over at the helm of the company, as most people thought, but since before that. Since college. Which became extra horrifying when one realized that Toni had been 14 when she’d started at MIT, and 14 still when they’d become friends. 

In fact, she’d been just shy of fifteenth birthday when a couple of guys, hired to kidnap her, had blindsided her coming off campus. She’d fought them off, sure, but that had been the first time that Jim had realized the true extent of the danger that Toni had been forced to grow up with and live with. He’d been aghast when he’d opened his door to a bruised and battered little Stark, but that was nothing compared to what he felt when she’d faced his inquiries with little more than a shrug and a dismissive response. As though it were nothing to be taken seriously because she’d _‘kicked their asses, anyway, Rhodey, and they didn’t get me, so why bother?’_

It had taken the better part of a month before Jim had felt comfortable letting her out of his sight, again. 

So he was all too familiar with the harsh jerk of bitter disappointment that came with finding out that a potential lead to getting Toni back, turned out to be hollow. Granted, his experiences had been more involved with kidnappings, lab accidents, abusive exes and the like, but that gut-punch? That was the same all around, and Rogers was still new enough to the party to get a lot of them. 

(In all honesty, Jim still got them an uncomfortable amount as well, but there was definitely some merit in telling himself that he could roll with the punches and Toni would still come out fine.)

It was a combination of his reluctant empathy and the immovable certainty that Toni would give him her disappointed look (more lethal than any of theirs for how rare it was) that kept him acting semi-gentle with the Captain. As the man identified himself and the suit flashed blue in acceptance thereof, though, Rhodes had the distinct feeling that nothing would help either of them when they saw what was stored on the suit’s servers. 

Or rather, heard, as it were.

 **“Oh, Captain, my Captain,”** Toni’s voice came over the speakers, crackly and ill-defined but still clear enough to capture the weary pain it contained. **“Look, don’t be mad, okay? I did the only thing we really could have done in this situation.”** A measure of earnestness slipped into her voice, and Rhodes wondered whether she was trying to convince them, or herself. **“It was my own fault anyway, I didn’t factor in the aftershocks because I thought the collapse would be stable enough, and… God, I hope nobody was hurt.”** Anguish now, the likes of which she wouldn’t have felt comfortable showing, but apparently was strong enough to bubble forth. **“If you’re listening to this message, then the kid is safe, and I can’t be anything but happy about that. He had a mother waiting on him to come home, and Steve, I… I had to make sure he got there. But,”** and all at once, familiar determination hardened her voice, **“I do have a plan. I kept the gauntlets with me.”** For the first time, Rhodey realized that the suit’s hands were also missing. It hadn’t meant much to him at first, figuring that she’d simply scavenged the parts like the wiring out of the left leg of the armor, but if she’d kept them intact… **“Now, it’s not my most elegant plan, mind you, but I think we can forgive me since I’m currently working on limited resources. My point is, the repulsors in them are still fully functional and I think I can use them to start blasting my way up, while you guys remove rubble from the top. The kid isn’t with me now, so I don’t need to be so careful about falling debris and whatnot, and we can’t afford to take things slow anymore. The structural integrity of the collapse isn’t going to remain stable as long as aftershocks are still coming on, which is a likelihood if my vague knowledge of natural disasters doesn’t fail me.”**

There was a small pause, and Jim took a moment to digest what Toni had proposed to them. He’d heard what she hadn’t expressly said – that her lack of a need for caution moving forward, meant that she would take risks with herself that she wouldn’t have taken with the kid – but what she’d said after had made sense, too. They couldn’t afford to play it safe, anymore, nothing about this situation was safe in any way. They could either blast, hack and force their way through, or else risk secondary and tertiary collapses until one of them killed her, or they got her out. 

Blasting their way through seemed like the lesser evil. 

Rogers seemed to absorb that as well, his fists clenched so tightly that Jim would bet his knuckles were stretched white. On the plus side, he supposed, the man hadn’t taken a swing at anything yet, so at least there was that to look forward to. 

Toni’s voice continued to speak, steady despite the crazy plan she’d mapped out. Typical. **“I can’t give you probabilities on this one, darling,”** she admitted softly, and Rhodes felt uncomfortably like he was intruding on an intimate conversation, all of a sudden. But Rogers didn’t show any indication of wanting him gone, so stubbornly, he stayed. **“I can only tell you that I have so many reasons to make it out of this. And I will. Starks don’t accept failure,”** she added dryly, and Jim smiled faintly at the reminder of the first time she’d told him that. **“So, I’m not going to do any of that stupid, last words thing. Because after everything we’ve been through, I have to believe that you – that everyone – knows already, just how much I love them. If they don’t, send ‘em to Rhodey, I’m sure he’ll be able to find that drunk recording of me saying it. And I know Peter will get plenty reminders of how much I love him, if I don’t get to tell him myself. But, on the off-chance that I can’t tell you this in person… _tu sei il mio cuore, la mia anima, e la mia vita,_ Steve Rogers. I’ll give you the translation when I see you. I love you.”**

The HUD flickered off. 

For a moment, both men were silent. Jim’s mind was racing, tormented by the fact that Toni had gone ahead and said her last words anyway, despite asserting that she wouldn’t. Did that mean that she knew something they didn’t? Something that might not give them the successful end that they needed? Because fuck that. If anything happened to her… if anything happened to her, he was going to bring her back just so that he could kill her himself. 

Because of course he knew how much she loved him, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t want to hear it from her, face-to-face. 

Not to say that he hadn’t, before. Granted, the first time he’d gotten the actual words from Toni, had been after Afghanistan, and she’d been high on painkillers and sheer relief at the time, but he’d heard them a lot from her after that. Almost as if the hesitation to speak those three words had vanished after gathering up the courage to say them the first time. He still remembered how he’d frozen in shock, having difficulty computing the words since he’d actually never heard her say them in the entirety of their friendship. Later, he would find out that she’d only ever said them a handful of times before, to her mother and Jarvis, and later still, he would learn that he was the first person in years who she’d been inclined to say it to, and really mean it, but in that moment? After three months of mind-numbing terror that he would never see his best friend and surrogate baby sister again? The only thing he’d been able to think about was how he was never going to let anyone hurt her like that again. 

In all honesty, though, for all that they’d meant a lot to him, he’d never actually needed the words. He’d always known that Toni loved him, before she said it, even before she’d traveled halfway across the country with him so that she could help him with his sick mother. 

He’d known ever since the day he’d met Edwin Jarvis. 

 

_“Antonietta Elena Stark, would you stop brooding and tell me what the bee in your bonnet is?”_

_Toni made a face at him over her Physics textbook, but her mood didn’t lift like he’d hoped it would. “Okay, first of all, don’t full-name me. I feel like I’m about to get yelled at for taking the toaster apart again.” Before he could take that sentence apart, she was continuing. “Second of all, nobody in the world actually uses that phrase anymore. It’s weird and doesn’t make any sense.”_

_“It makes sense,” he contradicted lightly. “You’re just digging for a change in subject.”_

_Truthfully, he was worried about his best friend; more so than usual, because the problem wasn’t something he could identify. Usually, his biggest challenges was getting her to rest and eat when she was in the middle of a project, and occasionally, he also had to lose sleep over her non-existent self-preservation skills, especially when she was being jumped, but none of those things had ever caused this reaction in the young Stark. She was never this quiet or withdrawn or downright despondent. There were days when he wondered whether she possessed the ability to stay on the ground when she was knocked down, and he regretted those fleeting thoughts now because there was little in the world that struck him harder than a forlorn Toni Stark._

_As she had done every time that he’d brought it up in the last week, Toni avoided the topic. “I think if I were trying to change the subject, I’d change it to something more interesting than stupid idiomatic expressions,” she argued, flipping a page that Jim knew she hadn’t read because the entire book was upside down. “Like, for example, I’d rope you into a discussion about some of the things that I’m working on for my Electronics class. Hey, did I tell you? Dr. Michaels thinks I can combine my coursework with some of the second year modules to decrease my work load. It might free up enough time for me to register for another degree or something, just for fun.”_

_“As thrilling as your plans to collect degrees sound,” Jim replied mildly, “you’re really just proving my point here. What’s going on with you, Tones?”_

_Finally, the young Stark deflated just slightly. It wasn’t anything close to a win for Rhodes, since the sight was pretty much like a punch to the face, but at the very least, she might tell him. That way, he could help. In order to do that, he first needed to know the problem._

_If it was Stone giving her a hard time again… he seethed a little as the thought crossed his mind. If it was that jackass, scholarship be damned, he was going to destroy the little bastard._

_Toni flipped her book closed and left it on the table between them. “It’s stupid,” she prefaced her confession in a small voice. “It’s just… I thought I was going to get a call from someone today, and he hasn’t been in touch for a couple of weeks but I just thought… well, I figured he would, today. And he did not. So. There’s that.”_

_Jim took a moment to process. This was… about a guy? He hadn’t even known Toni was seeing someone, let alone that she cared enough about him to become so dejected when he didn’t call. For that matter, why hadn’t the moron called? If he wasn’t in the hospital or suffering from amnesia, then he didn’t have a good excuse, as far as Rhodey was concerned._

_Because there was nothing he could do until she ‘fessed up with a name, Jim put his pen down and crossed around the table to the couch that she was lounging on. Sitting on the armrest, he pulled her to nestle into his side and dropped a kiss on top of her head._

_“Want me to beat him up for you?” he asked, only half playfully, but it worked to get him a wobbly little smile. “Just say the word, baby girl.”_

_“And what word, pray tell, would that be?”_

_Caution and confusion at the British accented voice that had entered their conversation had Rhodes raising a suspicious glance. An older gentleman was standing a few feet away; he didn’t look like faculty, but he must have been, since access to the campus library was restricted. Only… what interest did one of their MIT professors have in a private conversation between him and his best friend?_

_Jim realized that he was missing some piece of vital information when, instead of having her back up like he had his, Toni let out a sound of unadulterated delight and tore out of his arms. With all the grace of a newborn colt, she scrambled over the top of the couch and streaked across the slight distance to barrel into the older man. For his part, the man simply laughed, a rich and warm sound, and bundled her close into his arms._

_And well, Rhodes knew that love had no age restrictions and whatnot, but it would just be so many different levels of weird if Toni was dating this guy._

_Rather than speculate, Jim observed the pair. “You’re here!” Toni was mumbling, voice muffled by the man’s coat. “I can’t believe you’re… what are you doing here? Won’t Dad be…”_

_“Hush, dearest,” the older man soothed her, with all the gentleness of one who was handling something precious. “I apologize for not calling this week. I just wrapped up some business with your Aunt Peggy and I thought it might be more fun to pop by for a visit, especially considering what day it is today.”_

_Toni pulled back only long enough to beam up at him, before hugging the man again. Obviously, there was a lot of love and affection between them, but there was still a part of Jim that was wary. He had no clue who this man was, after all, and what he was doing here, or what the day was, but he had to protect Toni, which meant keeping his guard up and keeping his eye on the guy._

_The strange thing was, as he was hugging Toni, the man seemed to be doing the exact same thing to him. Rhodey knew what it felt like to be vetted, and with his sharp eyes and intense gaze, which seemed to be sizing Jim up, the man appeared to be doing just that. It made him bristle slightly, because it was Rhodey’s job to look after Toni, not anyone else’s. Certainly not some random stranger who probably didn’t know half as much as Toni as he did, not to mention…_

_“I want you to meet someone!” His internal rant was interrupted by Toni’s enthusiastic voice as she softly tugged on the man’s sleeve, pulling him towards Rhodey. “This is James Rhodes,” she introduced him with a bright smile. “Rhodey, I’d like you to meet Edwin Jarvis.”_

_Jim felt himself pale slightly. This was Jarvis? **The** Jarvis? The mentor and father figure and stalwart that Toni talked about at least four times a week and loved more than almost anyone on the entire planet? _

_Great. He’d just treated Toni’s favourite person like a child-pilfering pedophile._

_Rhodey hurried to offer his hand, automatic respect kicking back in. “Pleasure to meet you, Sir,” he smiled now, a little sheepishly, as if Jarvis could have heard his previous thoughts. Not impossible, it seemed, since the man looked highly amused as they shook hands. “Toni’s talked about you a lot.”_

_“And of you, Mr. Rhodes,” Jarvis returned with the same warmth he’d shown Toni, and Jim relaxed a little. Obviously, he’d been forgiven his unintentional slight. “You’re the… boyfriend?” He aimed a questioning look at Toni with the title._

_The genius rolled her eyes slightly, but she was grinning. “No-o, Jarvis,” she dragged the word out, making it sound like it wasn’t the first time she was making the clarification. “Rhodey is my…” She paused for a second, shooting him a thoughtful glance before nodding decisively and turning back to Jarvis. “He’s my Rhodey,” she stated definitively, as if that was the best way she could think of, to settle the question. Apparently, it was, because Jarvis gave a small nod of understanding._

_“And will you be joining us this evening, Mr. Rhodes?” Jarvis asked politely. “I had intended on taking Miss Toni out for dinner to celebrate her birthday, and the more the merrier, as they say.”_

_Rhodey blinked, guilt filling him as he fixed a look on his best friend. “Tones, why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday?” he asked, even as he reached out to pull her into a hug and press a kiss to her temple._

_“Didn’t think I’d be celebrating,” Toni shrugged, but from the sparkle in her eyes, it was obvious that Jarvis’ presence and their wishes meant something to her. “But since we are; you’re coming, right?”_

_She asked with such a genuinely, heartbreakingly hopeful expression that Rhodes would have had an easier time boiling live kittens than saying no. “Of course,” he agreed, ruffling her hair and grinning when she mock scowled at him for it. “Happy birthday, kiddo.”_

_“Thanks, Rhodey,” she beamed at him, before fairly bouncing towards the table to gather their books. “I just need to put these back on the shelf, then we can go,” she added, because they had a standing deal where one of them would bring the books to the table, and the other would return them. Before he could offer to do it, being that it was her birthday and she probably wanted to spend as much time with Jarvis as possible, the genius was bounding off, back to having more energy than a toddler on a sugar rush._

_Jim turned back to face the Stark butler, trying his best not to flinch underneath the piercing look that the man was hiding with an amiable smile. Rhodey got the distinct feeling that the man was seeing far more than most would at first glance, but he didn’t resent it. Not when he knew for a fact that Howard Stark hadn’t called his daughter at all since she’d come to MIT. If this man was willing to be everything that Toni’s biological father wasn’t, who was Rhodes to begrudge that?_

_Jarvis seemed to find whatever he was looking for, because he nodded slightly at Rhodey and his stance relaxed infinitesimally. “She cares a great deal about you,” he commented with deceptive nonchalance. “In fifteen years, you are the first that she’s deemed important enough to introduce to me.”_

_And okay, Rhodes had known that he was Toni’s best friend, but damn if that wasn’t equally touching and heart-wrenching. Had people been that cruel to her before? What reason did someone as young as Toni have, for maintaining such imposing walls? Whatever it was, all Rhodes knew, was that it wasn’t fair to her. Not to someone like Toni, who put her heart on the line without asking whenever she thought someone she loved needed it._

_Because he knew that Toni would resent the pity if she picked up on it, Rhodey chose to focus on the happiness the knowledge brought him. Toni wasn’t the kind of person who openly displayed her feelings, but Rhodes thought the introduction might have been the closest she’d come to outright saying that she loved him, in the way that he did whenever he off-handedly said it after he coerced her into bed post working-binge, or when she was fresh out of an argument with Howard and needed the reminder from him. It had never mattered to him that she’d never said it back, knowing as he did that she was hardly an open person with her feelings, but now he realized that she’d expressed it in the things she’d done._

_Toni didn’t **speak** of love nearly as often as she **showed** love. _

_Like the time when she’d skipped her favourite class just to bring him soup and stay with him because he’d been ill. Or the time she’d stayed up with him the entire night, helping him study for a Mechanics test that he knew she could have passed with her eyes closed._

_Or when she introduced him to her father figure because he was the only person she’d ever been sure she could trust._

_Countless moments over the course of their friendship wherein she’d said exactly that, and he was only hearing it now._

_“I love her, too,” Rhodey replied simply, when he realized that Jarvis was still waiting on a response from him. It seemed to be the right thing to say, because the man lost the last of his reservation and smiled at Jim like he meant it._

_“Splendid,” Jarvis replied cheerfully. “Just for future reference, it may interest you to know that I have a great deal of personal investment in Miss Toni’s happiness. I shall be most displeased to hear of any ill-treatment of her. I’m sure you understand.”_

_Oh, yeah. Rhodey understood threats all too well. After all, he had been making the same ones on Toni’s behalf since they’d met, although he had to admit that Jarvis had a certain flare for it. Something about the jovial tone and British accent made it all the more ominous._

_But Rhodes men didn’t flinch under fire, so Jim just nodded solemnly. “Perfectly, Sir.”_

_“Good man,” Jarvis asserted, and the approval, conditional though it may have been, was still important to him. And in that moment, Rhodey made three resolutions to himself:_

_One: He was never going to do something that would retract that approval._

_Two: He was going to learn to look harder at what Toni did, rather than listen to what she said._

_And three: He wasn’t going to let another one of Toni’s birthdays go uncelebrated._

 

He’d kept to those resolutions as much as he’d been able to, over the years. He’d added to them too, of course, but the most important thing he’d learned from it all, was the standard by which to hold anyone who entered Toni’s life.

For example, her super soldier boyfriend who Rhodey still wasn’t sure was firing on all cylinders. 

As if he’d heard the thought and wanted to prove otherwise, Rogers briskly walked away from the suit, purpose to his movements that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. “We have a plan,” he announced to Banner and Barnes, only glancing at Jim long enough to get his nod of agreement. Not because he was backing the man up, but because Rhodey trusted Toni. “We’re going to be working our way down while Toni tries to climb and or blast her way up. We can’t afford to be slow, but we can’t be reckless either, so if the floodlights are straining anyone’s eyes or you think you’re flagging, stop and rest until daybreak. Everyone else, keep moving debris and be careful not to get injured or dislodge your platform in the process.”

Rogers didn’t bother to repeat himself or check if anyone had any questions or protests; only turned on his heel and dug right back into the destruction; but Jim didn’t hold that one against him. Time was of the essence, now; Toni had been stuck down there for twelve hours, by the estimate his suit was giving him, and even at full health, that was eleven hours and 59 minutes too long. 

Without a word, Jim, Barnes, and Banner all followed suit, each of them working with renewed vigor and purpose. It was time to get their resident genius back. 

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! For the Italian that Toni says to Steve, you guys can feel free to google a translation, but if you want to be surprised like Steve, wait till next chapter! I'll have Toni telling him there ;) 
> 
> On that note...Coming up is the daring rescue and the epic, much anticipated reunion! ALL THE STONY FLUFF! 
> 
> For those of you who were looking forward to some Clint and Nat in this chapter, I do sincerely apologize, but I promise they will have some generous word-space in the next chapter! I've already got it mapped out, so stay tuned for it! 
> 
> Hope everyone enjoyed! 
> 
> -J <3


	7. Just Reach Out Your Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> I'm so sorry for my lengthy absence. I've been going through a really tough time with some RL stuff that knocked me on my ass and then some... it took a while to get muse back, and get back to writing, but I'm back now and I hope the lengthy chapter makes up for my absence! 
> 
> A special thank you to DarkPhoenix123, whose gesture of support was a huuuge help in getting me back to this work. Thanks, love! 
> 
> Hope you all enjoy the fluff ahead! <3

Natasha Romanoff had known one, irrefutable truth for the better part of her whole life: Love was for children. 

It had been the primary rule of the Red Room; like _‘Do unto others’_ for Sunday school, or _‘Work first, then play’_ for grade school; or whatever it was they taught normal kids doing normal things with normal lives. It had been her singular, most important lesson; the one that she had learned first, the one they had kept repeating, and the one that she’d been meant to carry for the rest of her natural life. 

Love was a weakness. It was a liability and an inconvenience and it got you killed in the field. 

An agent by the name of Clint Barton had been the first person to ever make her forget that irrefutable truth. It wasn’t, like she’d told others, because he’d saved her rather than eliminate her, per SHIELD’s suggestion. That decision had fostered a debt between them, that Natasha had yet to repay, but it had not fostered love. 

Love had come after Clint had introduced her to his family for the first time. It had been a gradual thing, creeping up on her before she’d realized it and for all that it had taken a while, it had still somehow been quick enough to keep her from preventing it. Stealthy, sneaky thing that it was. 

For the first time in her life, she had been accepted. Clint’s family had not only opened their arms to her, as Clint himself had, but they’d loved her in a way that she’d been trained to think of as weak, except… well, it hadn’t seemed like a weakness when she’d been faced with it. To her, it seemed to be an immeasurable strength to be able to find love in their heart for one whose hands were stained so deeply in blood red, as hers were. 

For the longest time, she hadn’t known what to do with it. With all this unconditional love and affection and acceptance. Nobody had ever taught her that – the Red Room had been about survival and about becoming cold, soulless, bloodthirsty machines who lived, breathed and existed solely for the mission. The only mention of love in that thrice damned place, had been how to use it as a tool of manipulation for the good of the cause. Because that was what it was, as she’d known it; love was a tool. 

It was only after meeting Toni that she realized she wasn’t the only person in the world who didn’t fully know how to deal with love. 

Even in the early stages of her assignment, well before she got the chance to examine Stark and attempt to peel back all the multiple layers that even surpassed Natasha’s own, the redhead had recognized a kindred spirit in Antonietta Stark. Where she had been trained by ruthless mercenaries into their own little pet assassin, Toni had been trained into the heir of Stark Industries by a man whose only love, reportedly, had been himself and his booze. In some ways, Toni had had it worse than she, brought up in an environment with the illusion of safety and no way of telling the difference between reality and the front put up for the rest of the world, outside of figuring it out herself. 

At least Natasha had always known she was an asset; Toni had been brought up to know she was an asset, act like she was a spoiled rich girl, and think that she was nothing more than an irksome bug. And if the rumours about Howard Stark were to be believed, that last one had been a particular pleasure of his to enforce. 

Either way, their shared toxic upbringings had been a shared thread between them, and might have even served as a basis for understanding between them, if not for the rookie mistake Natasha had made on that first assignment. 

She’d believed the lie. 

It was a mistake that she still sometimes berated herself for making. How often had she delivered a flawless performance of her own, living the lie so that others wouldn’t question it? She’d always thought it a strength of hers to pick up on the act, because there wasn’t a trick in the book that she hadn’t already played, but Toni… she’d more than lived the lie. She’d perfected her lie so that it became impeccable, above reproach or doubt. Certainly, it had been months after their last meeting before Natasha had realized that she’d been played. 

She supposed she’d deserved it, to an extent – deception courted deception – but it had vexed her no less. And then, inexplicably, it had worried her, because what business did this annoying, but admittedly brilliant genius have putting up a front like that? Pretending to be self-destructive and so full of it that she made people with narcissistic personality disorder look modest? What on earth did Toni have to protect herself against? 

And so it had become her own personal mission to answer that question, aided by the Avengers Initiative taking shape after the battle of New York. It had been part of the reason why she’d eventually trailed into the Avengers Tower a few weeks after Clint, and incidentally, also what had given her the chance to fix the mistaken snap-judgement she’d made against the billionaire. 

But more than that, it had given her the chance to gain a friend… 

 

_“Are you gonna sneak in all the time? Because I have to tell, it would kinda defeat the purpose of giving you a key and telling you to call this place home.”_

_Natasha cursed low under her breath as she looked up to face an amused-looking Toni Stark, looking for all the world like she’d been waiting patiently for Nat to show up. Which she might just have been; who understood people like Stark, and what they did in their free time? Certainly not Natasha; although it did seem a bit uncharacteristic. Her time with Toni in California had suggested that the genius was more often than not in her workshop, engaging her mind and avoiding idle hands. It didn’t seem likely that she would expend any non-existent patience on trying to catch Nat sneaking into the Tower._

_Or, for that matter, taking the stairs up a floor and then prying open the doors to find her in the elevator shaft._

_How had she known, then? Surely Clint wouldn’t have told her?_

_Before she could force herself to ask, Toni seemed to take pity on her. “JARVIS,” the brunette said by way of explanation, holding out a hand in a seemingly harmless offer to pull the redhead up. After a quick internal debate, Nat grabbed Toni’s hand and quickly exited the stuffy space, berating herself silently for forgetting that ubiquitous AI that Stark loved so much. “Although I’ll give you points for creativity. If he hadn’t tagged you coming in, you would’ve made it all the way to your floor.”_

_“My floor?” Natasha couldn’t help the words slipping out; Clint had vaguely mentioned that Toni had designed a place for each of them, catered to their individual tastes, but he hadn’t indicated that the place was an entire floor._

_Had Stark really done that for her, too? Even after her initial assessment against the other woman?_

_Toni, seemingly unaware or just uncaring of Natasha’s guardedness, nodded absently. “It’s right downstairs from Barton’s floor, since you two are apparently tight. You can keep sneaking in if you want, but I’ll give you an access card anyway, just to switch things up,” the genius teased, and where the words might have made the redhead bristle once, now it just made her want to smile in equal parts familiar exasperation and grudging fondness._

_Following the other woman back downstairs and into the waiting elevator, Natasha took the brief silence as an opportunity to study her apparently gracious host. Toni seemed alright, outwardly, but there was no hiding some things. Things like the shadows underneath her eyes, so deep they looked like bruises. Which meant nightmares. Things like the swollen, bitten-red of her bottom lip, so abused that it looked like it was a step away from splitting. Which meant nightmares she was dealing with alone. Things like the paleness of her skin and the weight she’d lost, making her look like she was hanging on by a bare thread. Which meant nightmares she was dealing with alone, by working herself to the bone without break._

_And then of course, there was the fairly obvious fact that the Stark was wearing a wife beater and jeans, and was awake enough at 3am to respond to the AI’s alert of an intruder mere seconds after Natasha had inadvertently tripped the silent alarm._

_Knowing that talking about it wasn’t what either of them wanted, Natasha chose not to comment on it. That, however, didn’t stop the instinctive jerk of concern in her belly, or the silent mission objective she found herself taking on, to keep an eye on the Stark lest she hurt herself in her quest to cope._

_“Why did you do this?” she asked when the elevator started to move, pointedly ignoring the unfamiliar protectiveness swirling in her gut. “The others, I get, but why for me, too? You don’t trust me.” The words were spoken matter-of-factly, without much emotion to them because in Nat’s mind, Stark was justified in her mistrust._

_Toni took a minute to respond; long enough that the former assassin almost thought she wouldn’t, until the genius sucked in a quiet breath and pinned an uncharacteristically solemn gaze on her. “I’m going to need to learn to trust you, aren’t I? This team isn’t going to function if we don’t all trust each other, both on the field and off.”_

_“Is that it?” Nat asked curiously, because it seemed like a truth, but only half of one. “You’re doing this so that we can learn to trust each other?”_

_The brunette leaned against the opposite wall of the elevator, a hand reaching up absentmindedly to rake her hair back. “I’m doing it for the team,” she said finally, and Nat waited patiently for her to elaborate. That patience was rewarded when piercing brown eyes landed on her again. “This team has given up a lot – has lost a lot – in the course of their lives, to bring them here. These people, you included,” and Nat had to suppress a jerk of surprise at that, “deserve more than what the world was prepared to give you. A tiny, SHIELD mandated room worse than army barracks and second-rate gear and equipment in exchange for your lives? I wasn’t going to let that happen while it was in my power to do otherwise.”_

_For the first time in her entire life, Natasha Romanoff was struck speechless. Maybe it was because she was faced with the first target – person – who had ever given her forgiveness, and it was one she was the least deserving of. Maybe it was because someone in this world believed that she was worthy of being granted salvation. Maybe it was because she was witnessing firsthand that Toni Stark was not nearly as self-absorbed and cold as the world frequently painted her to be. As she frequently painted herself._

_Or maybe it was because she heard what Star- **Toni** , wasn’t saying. _

_A home. She was giving them a home, because that was what she thought they deserved. A home, with comforts and a space that was entirely their own and the freedom to do what they wanted, when they wanted, how and with whom they wanted. A place to live, not just exist._

_Nobody had ever wanted to give her that, before._

_Before she could figure out what she was meant to say, or do, the elevator doors slid open soundlessly to reveal a long, empty hallway. As Toni stepped off the car, small lights along the skirting of the walls of the hallway lit up, casting a soft glow that was still enough to see by._

_“You can adjust it,” Toni spoke without prompting as she led the way to a single door. “The lights, I mean. I know you’d rather they be bright, better warning just in case of intruders, but since your room hasn’t been occupied, the default settings are still in place, and those are set at my preferences.” She opened the door with a hand print and retinal scanner; both of which Nat presumed would be set to her forensics as well; and it opened to reveal what could only be called an entire goddamn house._

_Somebody really needed to talk to Toni, redefine the word ‘room’ for her._

_Nat wasn’t ashamed to admit that she took the space in with wonder widening her eyes. What else could she do? The entire place was modern, sleek and efficient, designed in dove greys and pearl whites and muted blacks that somehow looked classy instead of deadly. The kitchen and living room was open-plan; something which relieved Natasha, since she didn’t much like doors for their potential to have something deadly behind them. There was a sprawling, L-shaped couch, low and stylish glass table in front of it, and a massive TV in the living room, but what drew her eyes the most was the fact that the entire place was carpeted, rather than tiled like the kitchen and the rest of the tower. As much as she tried to believe that there was no way for Stark to have known… she also couldn’t deny the evidence right in front of her eyes._

_She hated the chill of tiles getting into her feet. It reminded her of the cold, unforgiving concrete of the isolation room, where they would throw the girls, clad in little more than their underwear and thin, cotton bras, whenever they failed to complete the objective of the day’s lesson or task. She’d never been there often… but God, had those few times been enough._

_Because she couldn’t help herself, she asked. “How?” Uncaring of masks for the moment, she forced herself to face Toni with the question. “How did you know? About the carpets?”_

_“I didn’t,” Toni shrugged, and Natasha knew that she was speaking truthfully. “I don’t. But when you took your shoes off to get in the ring with Happy? Back when you were Natalie Rushman? You curled up on your toes when you weren’t in the ring. Since you were fine standing on the mat, I figured it wasn’t a germ thing, and thought that you just got cold easily when standing on tile.”_

_Amazing._

_Nodding slowly, she sent Toni a half-smile; it was barely there, and brief, but more than she’d given most people. “You’re observant,” she commented, and somehow, it came out less like a casual statement of fact, and more like an admission of praise and impression. She didn’t take it back, though, because that would have implied that it was dishonest._

_“Always had to be,” the other woman shrugged, and it wasn’t false modesty Nat saw in that moment, but genuine disregard. Something she understood all too well, because some things were just a way of life, no matter how impressive it might seem to others. “Half the battle of any boardroom is won by reading your people and surroundings.”_

_Fuck. Toni would have made a more than half-decent spy with that kind of upbringing. What else had she been made to learn to fit into this life that others thought of as being charmed?_

_As if realizing that she’d revealed more than she’d intended; fatigue was a terrible thing on the mind; Toni abruptly led the way to another smaller hall just off the living room. “You’ve got a full bathroom out here, but that’s mainly to go with the guest room,” she pointed out each entrance as she referenced rooms, “because the main bedroom has its own bathroom. And a walk-in.” Stopping at the door to the main bedroom, Natasha glanced in, already in love with the softer reds that melded with the grey and black in her room. The walk-in and the bathroom were as big as the room itself, which was saying a lot, since the room was easily the size of a convenience store. A king-sized bed and all the accoutrements paled in comparison to the big bay windows, complete with two window seats on opposite ends, and the shelves of books that lined half of an entire wall. Natasha knew without asking that the windows were made of bullet-proof glass, but there was one thing that she didn’t know._

_“What’s in there?” she asked, pointing to the one door that Toni hadn’t. It was on the same side of the hall as the guest bathroom, and since the bathroom was the smallest room in the place, Nat couldn’t help wondering what took up so much space there._

_Toni smiled, and it wasn’t her usual smirk, full of pomp and arrogance. This one was excited and anxious, like a child waiting for their gift to be unveiled. “Open it,” was all she said in response, and though she tried to control it, Natasha heard some of that excitement thrumming in her voice._

_When the redhead swung the door open to reveal a massive open space, with wooden floors, wall-to-wall mirrors and a tell-tale balancing beam, it took her a few seconds to realize it was a miniature dance studio. Specifically a ballet studio._

_She was silent for a beat too long, because suddenly, Toni was talking again. “The floors are heated, so you don’t need to worry about that, and JARVIS will handle whatever music you want, at whatever volume,” she explained quickly. As if what she’d done wasn’t good enough. As if what she’d done wasn’t the single most astounding thing anyone had ever done for Natasha in her entire life. “And you don’t have to use it for ballet, you can even just use it for exercise, or other dances, or… I just… well, you mentioned liking ballet when you were undercover, right? And I know a lot of that was fake, but I thought… I mean, that sounded like it was real. So I pushed for this room. We can change it if you want, in a heartbeat, I’ll get Pep on the phone and we can demolish tomorrow itself, have it rebuilt to whatever you want by the end of the week, Scout’s honor…”_

_“No.” Nat startled Toni into silence when the word came out a little more snarled than she’d intended. But the effect was the same. “It’s my room, and it’s my dance studio, and nobody gets to change a single thing,” she declared, sounding possessive, but also a little stunned. Which was okay, because she really, really was. The redhead turned to face Toni, trying to figure out just how to say thank you for everything the woman had done for her. For Clint, and for the rest of the Avengers._

_How did one say thank you for all that?_

_Without making the conscious decision to do so, she started to speak. “I was on a mission. In Peru.” Her voice was flat and dispassionate, because it had to be, but she could tell it confused Toni. All of it did. “I left two weeks ago and returned at twenty-two hundred hours last night. The objective was to infiltra-…”_

_“Stop, Agent Romanoff,” Toni shook her head when she realized what Nat was doing, making an aborted move to take Natasha’s hand. “That’s not how this works,” she said firmly, but gently, brown eyes more compassionate than Nat had ever seen them. “I’m not your handler or some shit like that. I’m not… this room isn’t yours on the condition that you report back to me or tell me whatever you’ve done or needed to do. This is your home, now. If you want it to be. No strings, no conditions.”_

_She knew that; she did; but at the same time, she felt compelled to give something back. Something in exchange for what she’d been given. Who just gave things away without ever wanting something in return?_

_Family._

_The answer came to her in Clint’s soft voice. He’d explained this to her once before._

_Family did, just because. They did, because they loved._

_Toni and Natasha weren’t family. They were barely even friends._

_But maybe that was something they could work on. With the team, too._

_Because she knew it would be a step all on its own, Natasha steeled herself, took a breath, and said the words. “I’d like to stay, please.”_

_Judging from Toni’s brilliant smile, it had been exactly the right move._

_“You’re welcome to,” the genius answered carelessly, but the sparkle in her eyes gave her happiness away. She started down the hall, back to the front of the place. “C’mon, let’s get your access sorted out. The card will get you in the tower and activate the elevators to take you passed the SI offices and straight up here. Your floor, on the other hand, will be controlled entirely by your forensics, for security purposes. JARVIS will only override if there’s an emergency. The common floor is three levels down from here; obviously, you can make yourself at home there, too, although if you want to make something with shrimp, I’ll ask that you do it here and then bring it down. Bruce is allergic and he uses a lot of those dishes, so I’d sooner not take the risk of him Hulking out because of a carelessly washed pot. Speaking of groceries, whatever you need to add to the list for the week, anything you need, just rattle it off to JARVIS. He’ll take care of it and it’ll get delivered by Jared, the sinfully hot guy who Pepper somehow procured to handle stocking this place every week. Questions?”_

_If Natasha had been anyone else, she would have been bowled over by the sheer amount of information that Toni had just dumped on her, but thankfully, years of debriefings with Coulson had immunized her. “None,” she shook her head gamely, trying but probably failing to hide how much all this fascinated her. This was going to be her life now? She was going from a homeless, nameless, faceless nobody, to a woman with a home, a family and the carte blanche to add to grocery lists and raid common floor kitchens? “Oh, wait, I do have one,” she amended, adopting an amused expression when Toni turned to look at her inquisitively. “Exactly how sinfully hot is Jared the delivery guy?”_

_“Oh, honey.” Toni’s eyes shone like Natasha had just asked her to take her place on an all-expenses paid trip to Cabo. “Come. Sit with me. Mamma Toni’s gonna hook you right up.”_

_It sounded less like an offer of hot, meaningless sex with Jared the sinfully hot delivery guy, and more like a disguised offer of friendship._

_Natasha took it with both hands._

 

Things had simply grown from there. Natasha had not only gotten proof that Toni Stark was the furthest thing from what her report had suggested, but she’d also gained an ally. And then a friend. And then a confidante. 

And lastly, a sister. 

For someone who had grown up alone, even surrounded by people, this new family meant more than the entire world to Natasha. She had a place here. A meaning and a belonging. It was beautiful and wonderful and nothing she’d ever experienced could compare to it. 

And it was here that she’d learned what to do with love. She’d learned that the only thing she could do, when given this amazing and unconditional love, was to work as hard as possible to be worthy of it. Deserving of it. And along the way, learn to love, too.

While Clint may have been the one to teach her that love was not simply a tool for the weak and powerless, it had been Toni who had taught her how to accept that love and love back. 

It made her particularly protective of the genius, it had to be said. Toni was the only sister she’d ever had; even Laura and Pepper had never broke the final barrier on that one. It wasn’t an easy course to follow in life, loving Toni Stark, because although it was worth it (so very, very worth it) it was a path that came with a lot of pain and fear. Quite simply, because Toni was a hero. She was a hero in every sense of the word. She protected and defended and stood for the entire world every single day, even if it meant putting herself in the line of fire. Too often, it meant just that, and for Natasha; and the rest of the Avengers; it meant constantly wondering whether they would have to give her up for the good of the rest of the world. 

It was a terrifying existence, but at its core, it had pride and a strength of heart that Toni had cultivated in them all. 

But never – not once – had Natasha considered that the earth would conspire to take its best defender outside the fire of battle. 

An earthquake? Take out Toni Stark? No way. 

Except that she had her eyes rooted to the television, knuckles whitening where they were gripping the handle of her mug, because apparently the child Toni had saved was safe… and quite possibly at a cost that Nat didn’t want to think about paying. 

She wasn’t aware of dropping her mug, and the subsequent crash as it fell to the common room floor. She was only peripherally aware of dialing Bruce, and the moment that Thor entered the living room, wielding Mjolnir and looking as dangerous as a warrior in the midst of his fiercest battle. 

“Is she okay?” she demanded when the call connected, refusing to acknowledge the shakiness of her voice or the grim look of understanding that passed over the Thunder God’s face. “Is she still alive?”

That question was the hardest thing she’d ever had to ask. 

Bruce sighed on the other end, sounding like he was coming off a tense internal battle with his vicious alter ego. **“She’s alive,”** he confirmed, and Nat closed her eyes for the briefest moment, letting the relief flood through her veins. **“And still fighting. She’s got a gauntlet with her and is climbing up while we try to clear a path for her. It’s touch and go, but it’s the best we can do with the building so unsteady.”**

“Okay,” she acknowledged a little hollowly. “I understand.” 

And she did. She understood that things weren’t good. She understood that there were no guarantees about how nature would run its course and hinder or help their rescue attempts. She understood that Toni had seen fit to send the child away, because she was planning on being reckless. 

She also understood that Toni loved her son, and their entire family, more than anything in the world, so if she was being reckless, there was a goddamn reason for it. 

Without another word to Bruce, and trusting that the scientist would understand, Natasha hung up. Thor, watching the news, understood enough – she could see as much on his face, usually so lively and jovial but now marked with the lines of a warrior who had known too much death not to think of it, now – but there was still another person who needed to know. 

She needed to be the one to tell Clint. 

 

###

 

Toni felt each and every movement like it was a lightning bolt of pain rocketing through her aching body. Her muscles sang with strain, evidently unimpressed by the pushing she was doing while dehydrated, and sleep-, food-, and oxygen-deprived, and her head throbbed vilely with the reminder of the concussion she’d yet to properly acknowledge. Her arm still bled sluggishly, seeping through her makeshift tourniquet at a slow but steady rate, and at some point – she wasn’t entirely sure when – she’d managed to split her bottom lip with all the gnawing she’d been doing on it. 

But she had her little Captain America button/good luck charm (that despite her teasing Steve about, had never actually left the confines of her suit until now), and she had the childish plastic, heart-shaped red ring that Peter had oh-so-solemnly gifted her with from his cereal box (that she proudly wore with everything from oil-stained jean shorts to sharp-cut Armani) and really, how much more strength did she need? 

Precisely none, because if the love of her life and their son wasn’t motivator enough, nothing else would be. 

She was almost tempted to talk herself through the climb, disquieting as it was without JARVIS as her constant guide and steady presence, but she was struggling for breath already; the thin air combined with the dust and her compromised lung capacity enough to thwart even her stubborn refusal to back away from a fight; and she didn’t want to aggravate the situation. Her progress was slow, but it was marked, and it would be for nothing if she did something stupid like pass out from lack of air and fall all the way back down. 

Not that she hadn’t already almost done that. Twice, actually, she had nearly grabbed onto a rickety hand- or foot-hold and if it weren’t for the quick reflexes she’d been honing all her life, she’d have dropped all the way back down, probably burying herself alive in the process. It was only then that she’d realized how lucky she and Maico were to have landed in an air bubble or sorts; and only now that she realized how precarious her debris prison was. 

On the plus side, she mused to herself wryly, at least all the times where she’d learned to duck a swing from her old man was now working in her favour. 

It was a joke that Steve would likely not appreciate, and Toni made a note to herself not to bring it up to the super soldier as she secured herself on another ledge. For all the things in her past that Steve had had little to no trouble accepting, Howard Stark’s abuse had been the one thing to really trigger him. 

She still vividly remembered the few weeks after her dear old dad had visited this century, after Steve had ignorantly defended him against her, not knowing the things she’d known. To say that the blond had been distraught would have been putting it lightly. To an extent, Toni certainly understood; abusive exes and drunken benders full of bad decisions could be explained, could be rationalized when put into perspective against the grand scheme of her life, but the idea that one so close and trusted, so loved and adored, so admired and regarded, could betray all of that and hurt his baby daughter? The idea that a friend, once so jovial and charming and harmless, could put his hands on the one person in the world that he should have protected the most? 

It was _devastating._

Toni had dealt with that devastation as a little girl, already; hidden in the safe and warm embrace of Jarvis, or her mother. From behind sparks and wires and tools and the wonder of creation, she’d regrouped and realigned her expectations and emotions. She’d learned how to foster the hurt and turn it elsewhere, to anger or belligerence or feigned indifference. 

Steve, on the other hand… he’d needed some time to get there. 

Which was a large part of the reason why he still didn’t know that she’d gone back to see her father after the incident, before he was sent back to the past. 

She still wasn’t entirely sure why she’d done it; perhaps an ill-advised attempt to prove to herself that he no longer had any dominion over her, the way he’d had when she was a child and through most of her adult life; but for whatever her reason, she was glad she’d done it. It had been cathartic to look him in the eye one more time, face him one more time, and not flinch. 

And then, of course, there’d been Loki… 

 

_Toni slipped out of the little office, leaving Clint in Coulson’s capable hands. She smiled slightly to herself as she heard the archer’s voice trail away, still trying valiantly to convince their handler that two or three arrows, very strategically placed, wouldn’t kill Howard Stark (“And even if it did, Phil, so the fuck what?! He **hurt Toni!** Fucker deserves to pay in blood for that!”) while the Agent patiently explained that people, even Avengers, couldn’t just go around impaling other people with sharp objects, especially not intentionally (“It would set a precedent, Hawkeye, and then all our junior agents would start doing it and I would have more reams of paperwork than I already have dealing with you and the rest of the team.”)_

_God, she wasn’t sure where she’d patchworked this family of hers from, or how she’d done it, but she was so profusely grateful for them._

_A large part of her wanted to just go straight back home. When she’d left, attempting as she had been to stop Barton from murdering her father, Peter had been safely snuggled up with Steve in the kitchen and Nat had wordlessly promised her that she would look out for them until Toni came back. The urge to be with her son – and distantly, she still jolted at the thought that he really was her son, DNA notwithstanding, and she was his mother, despite all her heated protests to the contrary – was fierce. In her mind, there was no good reason for her to be anywhere else when the little boy had been so scared and uncertain earlier. He would need her there, probably sooner than later, and she needed to be there when he did._

_So there was really no explanation for why her feet directed her thoughtlessly to the containment room where she knew they were keeping Howard._

_He didn’t notice her at first. It didn’t really surprise her; if Howard wasn’t raging and hating and belittling her, then he was wholly oblivious to her existence, it was always one or the other; but Toni hated that a small part of her still wished for something. Something indefinable, something more… just something. A chance, maybe, to work with him without the chasm that stood between them. She’d never denied her father’s brilliance. For all that he was a shitty father, he’d been a brilliant scientist, and for the longest time, she’d only wanted to see what they could accomplish together. Or maybe she was hoping for some kind of closure from him, some kind of explanation for why he looked at her like she was the worst thing that could have ever happened to him._

_But, she’d learned a long time ago to ignore that small part of her. In adolescence, she’d silenced it with booze and a revolving door of bedmates. In her youth, she’d continued the trend, but it had tapered off with the addition of Rhodey and his warmth and love and fierce conviction. In adulthood, when she’d created a family of her own, they’d served as a filler for that awful emptiness. And so she had learned something of contentment._

_For a moment, she just observed him. To her eternal surprise, there wasn’t anger or grief or any of the multitude of negative emotions she usually felt when she looked at him._

_Instead, she felt pity._

_What kind of life must it be, to never find the joy and love that came from having a family, or to have such an everlasting hatred for the person who shared in your DNA? Who made up a part of yourself? Peter wasn’t hers, biologically, and the team wasn’t her family by blood, but Toni couldn’t imagine a life where she didn’t love them, didn’t love that little boy, with every broken and battered part of herself. The family they’d constructed had given her life meaning where she’d had none before. Where she’d had Howard’s life, before, and that thought was a sobering one._

_She finally knew what he was missing out on. And for the first time in her life, she could pity him for it._

_When he noticed her, it was with a ready sneer and familiar look of disdain. “Come to sic another one of your lap dogs on me?”_

_“They’re not anyone’s lap dogs,” she replied a little sharply. “They’re mine, and I’m theirs. That’s it.” A brief flash of confusion came over her father’s face. Could he really fail to understand the concept of having people stand to defend you?_

_She wasn’t one to judge, she mused inwardly. Up until very recently, and still sometimes, it dumbfounded her to know that there was a group of people who would stand with her even if the world was burning around them._

_Howard recovered quickly, and she wasn’t surprised when he went for the obvious taunt. “Theirs, are you? Tell me, is it just the Stark fortune that you’re whoring out, or is it yourself as well?”_

_A part of her jolted at the insult. Lines that hadn’t been crossed when she was younger were being trampled on now, and it was a true mark of how rattled her father was, but it also dragged some old insecurities back to the surface._

_“Are you angrier that I found a family who cares about each other more than money, or are you angrier that my family includes Steve?” she asked softly, curiosity edging the tired acceptance in her voice._

_For his part, Howard only blinked in obvious surprise. Toni knew that he’d expected her to lash out, to give back as good as she got because that was what she’d always tried to do. She’d never met his cutting words and searing hatred with calm insight before, and it evidently stumped him. A part of her thought she should feel some kind of victory for that, but all Toni felt was a deep and unabiding weariness. How long had she been fighting this war with her father and when exactly was it going to end?_

_Never, if it was up to Howard, she knew. So she would have to be the one to learn how to let go. Or else let the bitterness and the hurt and the ill-feeling eat her up forever, until she was the shell of a person that her father was._

_She wasn’t going to let that happen. Not ever. She wouldn’t put her family through that._

_Howard advanced on her slowly and Toni tensed in response. “Do you honestly think that those people would stand with you if you weren’t bankrolling their lives, Antonietta?” he asked, and his voice was strangely intense. Suddenly, he didn’t sound like he was mocking her or taunting her… he sounded like he was warning her. He sounded like he was trying to make her understand, make her see something that she knew wasn’t there._

_It couldn’t be there._

_“Why do you want everyone around you to be as unhappy as you are?” she asked instead of answering, a hint of desperation edging her tone as the inventor fought against the doubts that were lurking in her mind. Toni forgot her pity standing there, trying to defend her decision to let her team into her heart over and above her home. “Why do you insist on making me believe the worst of everything and everyone?”_

_The idea that he might have been trying to help her lost some merit when he sent another disgusted sneer at her. “You’re weak,” he stated cuttingly, as if he couldn’t believe that something with his DNA had turned out the way Toni had. It was a tone and expression that she was rather well-acquainted with, by now._

_“I’d say that weak is the man who would raise a hand to his own daughter,” a silky voice interrupted from behind them before Toni could make any response. She turned around to see a familiar man standing in the doorway, but she couldn’t quite seem to place his familiarity. In her entire life, she’d never forgotten a face, but this one eluded her. “Wouldn’t you agree, Howard? I mean, whatever happened to making yourself heard without resorting to such unseemly things?” he continued, aiming his cold words at her father, over her head._

_Who was he, why the hell was he defending her, and most importantly, how did he **know**? The abuse had been her best-kept secret right up until earlier today. _

_She figured out the first part the very instant that she turned around to see her father’s rapidly paling face._

_Howard swallowed almost audibly, looking weak and timid for the first time that Toni had ever seen. “Dad.”_

_Holy fucking everything, did everyone in her family know how to time travel? Was she going to visit Peter in the future someday, in a time when he would be a grownup, married with a kid and paling at her appearance? God, she hoped not. For the last part, anyway._

_“You’re no son of mine,” Stark Senior Senior (because, well, she guessed he deserved two of the seniors in front of his name) replied scathingly. The power of the disdain and venom in his voice was almost tangible in itself. “In an entire line of Stark men, never have we raised a piece of scum who would raise a hand to a woman. You disgust me.”_

_The words hit Howard with the same sort of impact as if it had been a physical blow. He reeled back, as if scorched, and even as she remembered all the times she’d done the same, Toni still felt sorry for him._

_That empathy only exacerbated as her father raised blazing eyes towards Grandpa Stark; Toni recognized it all too well as her own attack-oriented defense mechanism. “I’ve never raised a hand to my wife, as I was taught, but raising a hand to my heir was something I assumed was common practice. You certainly did it enough.”_

_Well. That explained a lot._

_While a vile mixture of pity and anger and an inconceivable protectiveness filled her, the two elder Starks seemed to be waging a silent war between each other. It was her presence, Toni realized belatedly, that kept the men from taking swings at each other; not because they wouldn’t do so in front of her, but because she was physically stood between them._

_God, she hoped that she’d landed closer to her mother’s family tree._

_“You’re both of you disgraces to the Stark name,” she stated quietly, and two identical flashing sets of eyes pinned on her. It didn’t stop her, not now while her temper was so fresh, and yet so lethally under control. “You’ve turned a legacy of greatness into a cycle of abuse and hatred and violence. The world, under your eras, regarded the Stark name to be synonymous with death; not protection, or brilliance, or patriotism. Death and destruction and horror. Before you throw the blame around, think about this; when you all had a chance to be better, you weren’t. I’m trying to be, and I want to turn the Stark name into something beautiful again, but let me say this; I can only hope that the Carbonell runs stronger in my blood, or else I won’t have a chance.”_

_It was the last frosty glare that she gave both of them before leaving that clued her in on the truth._

_As such, she was still waiting outside when, ten minutes later, Loki in his real form walked out of the room. For a moment, when he caught sight of her leaning against the wall, he looked amusingly like a deer caught in the headlights, but when he noticed that she looked more annoyed than angry, he took up his usual cocky, uncaring pose._

_“A charming performance in there, Stark,” he drawled mockingly, a tone that she knew was designed to get her back up. She didn’t let it. “It amuses me, how you humans purport to evolve only to go making the same mistakes over and over again, repeating with your children what was done with you.”_

_Months ago – hell, weeks, or even hours ago – Toni would have fallen for that act. She would have ripped him a new one, first verbally then physically, assuming that Thor didn’t show up to play mediator before she could finish. She would have relished doing it, too._

_But she knew what she’d seen in there. And that had been genuine anger in his eyes when he’d stared down Howard Stark and confronted him for hurting her._

_She wasn’t sure when and how it had happened, but she’d made friends with the supremely annoying Trickster God. She hadn’t known it, but the proof was in the pudding; or in the patriarchal impersonation and subsequent show of protectiveness, as it were._

_Allowing a small smile to curve her lips, she tilted her head and regarded him. “I’ve got your number, BJ Hunnicutt,” she informed him, ignoring the twitch of an eyebrow that came from the references he didn’t understand. “I didn’t need the backup in there… but thanks for it, anyway,” she added, meaning it more deeply than she cared to admit. She wasn’t sure how exactly Loki knew that her father had suffered similar abuse from his father, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know how the Norse God knew it, anyway, but it had given her something that a couple decades and a lot of alcoholic therapy hadn’t._

_Understanding._

_She couldn’t quite forgive Howard just yet, but she was suddenly a step closer than she’d been her whole life. And that was thanks to Loki._

_“Yes, well.” The Trickster sniffed imperiously, looking discomfited by the casual unveiling of his true intentions. “The idea of your father taking out his anger on one as weak and defenseless as you were as a child affronts me.”_

_Her smile widened just a bit, and she teasingly asked, “You can’t just admit that you were having my back?”_

_“I abhor your axioms,” he huffed, making her bite back a laugh at his stubborn refusal to admit to having a heart. She could relate, to an extent. “Is it the primary goal of your simplistic race to reach a point where none of your words have a shred of sensible meaning to them?”_

_Without bothering to answer that, Toni pushed off the wall and slowly, telegraphing her movements, wrapped Loki in a hug. The lanky man stiffened against her for a long moment, before letting out a breath that drained his tension along with it. Hesitantly, he hugged her back, and for all that they would probably never speak of this moment again, Toni knew she would always remember it._

_Stepping back, she favoured him with a small, but genuine smile. “You’re nothing like what you came from, Loki,” she told him, in the back of her mind hoping that she could one day tell herself the same thing. “I hope that I get to see you and Thor turn over a new leaf. You know, since you and I already have.”_

_With a quick wink and a lazy little salute, she left Loki to ponder on those words._

_She had a family to get back to._

 

Not unlike then, Toni had the firm thought of her family in her head as she fought to take every next step, and breath, and move. The only difference was that her family had grown since that day; now, it included Bucky as well, who she couldn’t even begin to imagine her life without. It included Sam Wilson, who she had been right to assume would become friends with Steve and Bucky, and bring a little light to all their lives in the process, and it even included Loki, who now visited her for no apparent reason, completely unabashedly, and had even taken to her son. 

Who had more to fight for than she?

So with muscles screaming and head splitting and every inch of her body begging for her to let go, Toni held on. She held on tight, because there simply was no other option but to drag herself, inch by bloody inch, back to home. Back to family. She’d once promised herself that she would never let her son down, and she would be damned if she broke that promise now. If she broke any of her promises, now, including the one that she’d made to him before sending Maico up. 

Come hell or high water, she was going to tuck Peter in tonight. 

Focusing on his face, and on Steve’s, and on the rest of their family’s faces, she hauled herself up one more perch. 

And then another. 

And another. 

And she would keep on going until she reached the top. Or the end. 

Whichever one came first. 

 

###

 

Clint had lived a life largely fraught with pain, anger, loss, regret, and then more pain. 

Most of his adult life had been centered on the next mission. Nothing much had mattered to him outside of the job that had finally given him some meaning and purpose, and he hadn’t looked forward unless it was at a new target. His adolescence had comprised of the aimless wanderings of a lost soul who had no hope of finding something to lend substance to its existence, and his childhood was a landmine that he wouldn’t step close to on threat of death. 

Laura had been the first real interlude for him, on this general path of pain. She’d challenged him, fulfilled him, and introduced him to a whole new aspect of life, and himself, that he hadn’t even realized he’d been missing. For the first time in his life, Clint had smiled; not because it was what was expected of him, and not because the mission required him to, but because he’d been helpless not to do it. The swell of joy and affection as he’d looked upon the woman he knew had stolen his heart, had been far too powerful not to show. Gradually, and without him noticing, Laura had changed him… made him a far better man just by being the amazing woman she was, and Clint would have gone through all the pain, anger, loss and regret ten times over if it meant that it would always lead straight back to her. 

After she’d given him everything by agreeing to be his forever, things had somehow just begun to fall into place for the archer. His family had grown, and not only biologically; he’d met Natasha and found a family in her that defied logic and expectation, given that she was initially meant to be his next target. Instead, she’d become his friend and partner, and then something akin to a sister. She was the most important thing in the world to Clint, next to Laura and the kids, and for the longest time, he’d just unquestioningly accepted that she was the only thing he would have to stand as his own family. 

And then there was the Avengers Initiative. 

Clint still wasn’t entirely sure how that one had crept up on him; and by that one, he meant the mismatched family that had banded together over the course of the past few years, adding to the tally that had started with him and Nat. Laura often teased him, saying that she’d had to wait for years after their marriage before he’d given her in-laws, and though Clint pretended otherwise, it made something that was now all too familiar swell up in his chest, to think that these people were now his. His family, and his alone. 

For one who’d never had people to call his own, Clint was fiercely possessive of those he did. 

After all these years, and the family that he’d managed to build, the archer had forgotten about the punch of pain and anger and loss and regret. He’d gotten soft, in a manner of speaking, and had gotten used to the feelings of comfort and happiness that had invaded what had been an existence dominated by darkness. 

And he only realized it when Nat had approached him, a familiar grim look in place that was equally unfamiliar in their home, and told him what had transpired in the time that he’d foolishly taken to sleep. 

Clint clenched his jaw, eyes cast over the expansive city that the Avengers Tower overlooked. He loved heights; ever since he was little, it’d always helped him to clear his mind; and Toni had seen to it that the refurbished Tower included a comfortable, but safe vantage point that gave him an unobstructed 360 degree view. Just one of the many things that she’d done for him – for this family – to turn an ordinary building into a home. Only now, for as much as his perch provided him with a sanctum of sorts, Clint didn’t think anything would clear his mind of the image that pervaded it. 

Toni, hurt and scared and alone, clawing her way up from the destruction and hanging on to survival by a single thread. 

She, like Nat, had become a sister to him. Clint wasn’t sure when it had happened; probably at some point between the day that she’d opened her home to him, and the day that she’d done the same for Natasha; but regardless of how, it had happened, and it went against his very being to be muddling around helplessly, thousands of miles away, while Toni was in trouble. Logically, he knew that they’d sent their heavy hitters in to help her, giving her the best shot at making it out relatively unscathed, but if he’d learned anything over the years, it was that there was nothing logical about family. Even as he knew that it didn’t make sense, Clint still wanted to be there, to try and do everything in his power to make sure that his surrogate little sister made it out of there without any more damage that she’d already, unacceptably, sustained. 

_What can you do, that two super soldiers and a Hulk can’t?_ he asked himself scathingly, familiar self-recrimination bubbling just under the surface of artificial calm. As far as the inherent limitations of being an unenhanced human went, Clint rarely felt them on account of his extensive and advanced training, but today, all of them seemed to mock him ceaselessly. 

There was nothing worse to him than being helpless. If a shrink ever managed to pin him down long enough to psychoanalyze him, they’d probably attribute that to a childhood spent being perpetually powerless to break out of the cycle of hurt and abuse that he’d suffered, and the fact that the vilest of that pain had come from being unable to do anything but watch as his brother had suffered even worse. To Clint, it didn’t matter how and why he felt it so keenly, because it didn’t change the fundamental fact that someone he loved was hurting and he couldn’t make it better. 

In his life, there’d only been one time and one person who’d managed, not to erase his helplessness, but at least to ease its sting by turning it into an opportunity for growth. It hadn’t been Laura, who was his lifeline and savior and angel nevertheless, and it hadn’t been Nat, who represented his salvation, to him. 

It had been Toni who, at the time, he had barely considered to be a friend. 

Only a handful of months after accepting her invitation to live at the newly christened Avengers Tower, Clint had been caught between a rock and a hard place after a call from Laura, which had revealed the slightly pressing problem of their son’s increasing rebellion. Cooper wasn’t a bad kid, but he was a hyperactive one, not unlike Clint had been, and his perceived forced confinement at the farm had been enough to make him go a bit stir-crazy. The kid loved music, in every form, but with no real way of learning how to play an instrument, his only outlet had been playing outside; which, as he grew older, had lost its appeal quickly. 

The archer would have given anything to help ease his son’s pain, even buried as it was underneath childish anger, but the cost of living off the grid, keeping his family safe from harm with top of the range security and still supporting them all on his paycheck alone… SHIELD paid him well, but not exorbitantly, and less so after he’d joined the Avengers, as the transition had bumped him down to a SHIELD contract employee. Damn bureaucratic red tape. 

Even if he had been able to private, home lessons, there had also been the simple fact that they were meant to be under the radar. Nobody outside of Nat knew about his family and where they lived, because even one person knowing could put them all in jeopardy, and that wasn’t a chance that Clint had been willing to take. 

And so, the dreaded helplessness had kicked in. 

At the time, it had felt like a weight close to the world’s had been sitting across his shoulders. How could he, or anyone, have possibly predicted that it would be Toni Stark, the woman renowned for her cold and untouchable demeanor, who would share that load with him?

 

_“Look, Katniss, I know I’m as powerful as any God, but I’m not omnipresent! You mind giving me a heads up the next time you decide to jump off a building? A bit of forewarning can go a long way towards making sure you don’t go splat,” Toni grumbled as they left the debriefing room on the helicarrier, sounding just sharp enough to let Clint know that she was being serious._

_The genius never complained about them in these post mission briefs; she complained about wasting her time in debriefing, she complained about her suit getting battered, she definitely complained about whatever villain of the week had tried their luck on them; but she didn’t dump on the team until they were outside of the official meeting. It was a kind of principle to her, Clint supposed, and a show of loyalty to them that she took her issues up with them rather than tattle to their handlers. It was something he’d always respected, and even he could admit that he’d cut his call earlier a little close for comfort, but with the stress of Cooper’s burgeoning unhappiness and Laura’s fretting atop of it, the archer couldn’t help losing his temper with the first easy target that presented itself._

_Rounding abruptly on her, he snapped back, “If you can’t handle your position on this team, and one of the few things you actually bring to the table besides your fancy toys, then get off the field, Stark. Don’t make it everyone else’s problem just because you can’t do your fucking job.”_

_For a brief moment, everything stilled. Their teammates stopped in their tracks, four pairs of eyes suddenly swiveling to them, and the agents passing by scurried quickly away, as though afraid of the fallout of his words to the woman that was still encased in the deadliest mechanized suit of armor that the world had ever seen._

_And ever would see, likely, as long as Toni had something to say about it._

_But none of that hit Clint as hard as the almost imperceptible jerk that Toni gave, as though his words had physically impacted on her. Not to be outdone, there was the slight widening of her eyes, not like she couldn’t quite believe the words, but that she couldn’t believe they had come from him._

_It turned his stomach, putting that look on her face._

_And then the coup de grace; Toni didn’t say a single word in her own defense, or against him. Instead, she only gave the slightest inclination of her head before lifting her chin just slightly and walking away, the picture of a wounded soldier still walking._

_“Just what the hell is your problem, Agent Barton?” Almost immediately, Steve was in his face, blue eyes ablaze and jaw set in righteous temper. “She wasn’t telling you anything that didn’t need to be said.” As much as Clint knew the whole chivalry thing wasn’t just an act to the Captain, he also knew that this reaction was more than that; it was the reaction of one defending the person they were falling in love with. Whether their two esteemed leaders knew it yet, or not, they were building something between them that would rival any storybook couple._

_He would bet money on it; Hawkeye never missed a trick._

_Unfortunately, it meant that he had the brunt of the man’s anger to deal with on top of the unnaturally potent guilt from taking a chunk out of Toni._

_Biting back a sigh, he planted his feet, but kept his arms loose at his side in wordless acceptance of his fault. “Look, I know, alright? I’ll go talk to her.”_

_“No, actually, you won’t.” Surprisingly, the words didn’t come from Steve, but from Nat. The redhead shot him a look of reprimand that wouldn’t have been out of place on Coulson. Was she taking lessons or something? God, he hoped not. “You’re going to walk it off, whatever bug crawled up your ass, and you’re going to apologize to her later. And then hope that she doesn’t kick you out of the Tower.”_

_“She wouldn’t do that,” Bruce interjected, and the cool voice coming from the usually kind, soft-spoken scientist was worse than Nat and Steve put together. “Toni put all our names on the lease of the new Tower. She said she wanted it to always be a home for all of us to come back to whenever we wanted.”_

_Man, Clint thought uneasily to himself. When Banner did guilt, he did it well._

_A few hours, and a few square-tons of self-recrimination, later, Clint rapped his knuckles lightly on the door to the billionaire’s workshop. He didn’t have to wait nearly as long as he thought he would have for an answer._

_“I’m afraid Miss Stark is engaged at this time,” JARVIS informed him coldly, the AI making no secret of the contempt in which Clint was currently being held. “I would suggest, Agent Barton, that you return when you obtain a suitable understanding of the phrase ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’.”_

_Clint winced slightly, knowing that he deserved as much from the protective AI. “I understand the phrase, ARIIA,” he replied wearily, even knowing that it was probably unwise to lobby barbs with the robot that controlled most of the Tower. “Would you please let me in so I can talk to her?”_

_“If you want something from JARIVS, may I suggest not comparing him to ARIIA when he’s so clearly closer to Skynet?” Toni drawled dryly from behind him, making Clint whirl around. She acknowledged the AI’s smug sounding thank you with a distracted wink in the direction of the closest camera, before turning speculative eyes on him. “If I managed to catch you off-guard without trying, you must really be off your game,” she observed lightly._

_Before he could figure out what to say to that, she was brushing past him, back into the workshop. “Why’d JARVIS say you were busy when you weren’t even here?” he grouched eventually, following her in._

_“Why does Coulson field Fury’s calls after we’ve had a rough mission?” she asked back with a delicate shrug of her shoulders. “Protective instinct.”_

_The polite words, the restrained actions, the perfectly level voice… she was treating him like a hostile, and deserved though it was, it was driving Clint crazy quick. He hadn’t realized just how much he loved bantering and letting loose with Toni until it hadn’t been an option to him anymore._

_He wanted to apologize, but he knew somehow that those two words wouldn’t be nearly enough. Without conscious thought to the action, he begun to speak, and even as he cursed his mouth, it was liberating to loosen the worries off his chest. “I have someone I care about who’s unhappy,” he explained, and knew he had her attention when she lowered the blowtorch she’d just picked up. “He’s a kid, and he wants to learn music, and I would do anything to help him, anything I could, but… I don’t know anything about it, and it’s just not as simple as getting someone else to do it.”_

_Clint wasn’t one for heart-to-hearts, but damn if it didn’t feel good to speak the words that were rattling around in his brain and driving him up a wall._

_Toni turned slowly to scrutinize him. “I know a guy,” she said carelessly after a moment of consideration. “Consider it done.”_

_“You can’t just throw money at every problem and expect to solve it,” Clint shot back sharply, and though he knew that he was digging his own hole even deeper, he couldn’t help the sting that came from wounded pride. Not that Toni knew there was any implication about what he could and couldn’t afford to do for his family…_

_At last, it seemed, the genius decided to take a stand. Eyes flashing garnet with temper, she snapped scathingly, “Look, Hawkass, contrary to what you may believe, I don’t throw money at problems. I throw myself at problems, because that’s pretty much the only way I can guarantee it’ll be fixed. Money, on the other hand, I throw at things I believe in, like charities and rebuilding efforts and research funding. And kids who want to learn music. Now, you can put your fragile male ego ahead of whoever it is you care about, and that’ll be your own goddamn problem, but I’m gonna call my buddy and he’ll be here tomorrow to teach you everything you need to know about music so that you can help the kid. If you choose not to show up, it’s no skin of my back, buddy. Now get the hell out of my space.”_

_She turned back to her work and either completely missed, or didn’t care for the gobsmacked look on Clint’s face. He wasn’t sure what part of her words were surprising him more; the fact that she’d still offer her help after everything, or the astute assumption on her part that he didn’t want to introduce any stranger to his son. And she didn’t even know about Cooper; she just understood that he wouldn’t want any unknown variables around someone he cared about._

_So she thought to arrange lessons for him, instead of his son._

_To give him the tools not to be helpless anymore. To let him help his son by himself._

_“I’m sorry,” he croaked, unable to say anything but. He felt like the lowest of the low. “I’m sorry.”_

_On a sigh, Toni glanced over her shoulder. Whatever she saw on his face was apparently pitiful enough that she turned the rest of the way around, eyes softening back to light chocolate brown. “I know what it’s like to feel helpless,” she told him gently, and the real understanding in her voice shook something in his chest loose. “I wouldn’t dream of adding to that. But someone once told me that we’re only helpless as long as we don’t use every tool in our arsenal. I’m here, and I’m offering. Make use of that.”_

_She was right; he knew she was right. But she was also very, very wrong._

_“You’re not a tool to be used,” he refuted lowly, but firmly. “You’re a frie-… you’re family,” he amended, knowing he’d said the right thing when a soft, impossibly happy light reawakened in her eyes. “And I’ll be there tomorrow. Thank you.”_

_As expected, she waved off his gratitude with a dismissive hand, but there was no hiding the slight flush of pleasure that suffused her cheeks. “Don’t mention it, Merida.”_

_“You know,” he chuckled slightly, dragging his eyes over her, “one day, you’re gonna make a great mother.”_

_She snorted indelicately. “You offering to make me one?” she flirted teasingly, sending a playful leer his way. He grinned broadly at the familiar form of banter from her, but before he could give it back as good as he’d gotten it, Toni shook her head in amusement. “Nah, I’m not mother material.”_

_Clint thought about how she constantly shielded the rest of the team, both on the field and in the press. He thought about how she patched Steve up after a fight and soothed Bruce after his transformations. He thought about the way she berated Thor for his unhealthy eating habits, but kept a perpetually stocked supply of them for him, and how she gave Fury and Coulson a heated mouthful whenever Nat came back hurt or tired from a recon mission._

_He thought about how she always made sure she caught him whenever Clint jumped off a building; and how comfortable he always felt doing so, because he knew without a shadow of doubt that she would always be there to make sure he didn’t go splat._

_“Sure you’re not,” he agreed with a grin, clearly humoring her. She was definitely mother material, and one day, she was going to figure that out for herself._

_He would bet money on it; Hawkeye never missed a trick._

 

Of course, he’d been right on both counts. Toni and Steve had gotten together in spectacular fashions and epic proportions, and later, the once purportedly cold and immovable Toni Stark had been bowled over by the little boy that she claimed as her own son. Hawkeye really never missed a trick, but unfortunately, for as fantastic as his vision was, Clint didn’t have the ability to peer into the future. 

If he could have, hell if he would have ever let Toni leave on that business trip.

That goddamn business trip.

Look just where it had gotten them? Okay, it was great that she’d saved that kid, the archer couldn’t possibly negate that, but what was the cost of her actions going to be? How could they be sure that it wouldn’t be the unthinkable, this time? 

They couldn’t be sure. Of course they couldn’t be. 

Clint ran an agitated hand through his hair. There really was nothing worse than being helpless. 

Before he could do anything rash, like put his fist through a wall, his phone buzzed. A quick glance at the caller ID was enough to bleed at least a fraction of the tension from his muscles. “Hey, Babe.”

“Oh, honey.” Laura’s voice, even over the phone, brimmed over with a mixture of fear, sympathy, pain and worry. “I just saw the news. What’s the update? Is she alright?”

Part of Clint settled at the way his wife very pointedly didn’t ask what the rest of the Avengers were asking; whether or not Toni was still alive. “There’s a plan,” he answered heavily, dragging a palm over his eyes. “Thor, Nat and I are holding down the fort and keeping an eye on the kid, so I’m not too sure what’s going on over there. Our latest update was a couple hours ago. Bruce just said that she was trying to climb while they dug a little.”

A soft sound of distress left Laura’s mouth, enough that Clint knew the visual was scaring her in the same way it was scaring all of them there at the Tower. She’d gotten closer to Toni, slowly but surely, and the two woman had become close friends, similar to how Laura had befriended Nat. Though his wife was removed from the action, so to speak, it didn’t stop her from worrying about them; case in point. 

“She’s going to be fine, honey,” Laura finally spoke, her voice brokering no argument. Apparently she’d bypassed most of her fear and went straight to fierce conviction, which Clint realized he’d really needed to hear. “This is the woman that 99 percent of the universe hails as the most brilliant mind of the millennium. Some rocks and gravel aren’t gonna beat her, you’ll see.”

For the first time, a smile flickered across Clint’s face. Hadn’t he said that she was his lifeline and savior and angel? 

“You’re right.” He nodded, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “This is Toni Stark we’re talking about. She’s gonna kick my ass for even thinking different.”

He could hear the returning smile in her voice. “Damn right. Keep me updated, honey, okay? I gotta go make sure the kids stay away from the TV. You know how much they love their Auntie Toni.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea, honey,” Clint replied, steadier now with the renewed faith that he’d borrowed from his amazing wife. “Give ‘em a hug from me. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Hawkeye.” 

He hung up the phone with a faint smile on his face, preparing himself to go back downstairs and deal with whatever was waiting for him there. Clint refused to believe that it would be anything less than his little sister’s full recovery; because if he didn’t believe in her now, how the hell was she meant to believe in herself? Maybe she wouldn’t know or give a damn about how he felt just then, but that didn’t give him any excuse not to have faith in her. 

After all, she always caught him whenever he jumped. 

 

###

 

“Think fast.”

Steve glanced up just in time to react, throwing a hand up to snatch the bottle of water from the air. It had been sailing directly for his head, and part of him wondered whether it had been thrown with the dual advantage of either aiding him, or getting to watch him take a water bottle to the skull. 

Judging from the brief grin on James Rhodes’ face, Steve was guessing that he wasn’t far off. 

On the one hand, it was typical behavior for the Lieutenant Colonel to throw things at him in the hopes that he wouldn’t dodge or catch it in time. On the other, Steve mused as he cracked the bottle and sucked down half its contents in a single gulp, it was entirely unlike the man to get him a water just because the sun was reaching its peak and beating down on them, and Steve had been like a man possessed for the past few hours, alternately digging and dragging Bruce over for an echo image to check their progress. 

Give him a hard time? Yes. Definitely yes. Try to make things a little easier on him? Not a chance. 

But years spent trying to keep a promise to Toni wasn’t easily erased. “Thanks,” Steve nodded politely, capping the bottle after draining the last of the water. He’d promised to be courteous, not particularly friendly. Without needing him to holler, Bruce dragged the imaging equipment to where Steve was, fatigue tightening his features. It was an arduous procedure, tossing out an echo every twenty minutes or so to make sure that they didn’t remove rubble that could potentially cause another collapse and take Toni out with it; arduous, but extremely necessary. Any more harm coming to Toni was totally unacceptable, and that was something all the men involved could wholeheartedly agree on, differences aside. 

Steve hauled himself up and out of the crater he’d put in the rubble since he’d restarted, giving Bruce the space he needed to work and also giving himself a minute to take a breather. It went against his every instinct, but the strategist in him had been very vocal about making sure that he didn’t rush headfirst into this rescue like he did almost everything else. This was the very definition of a delicate operation, and Steve wouldn’t let anything – neither fault nor fatigue – jeopardize it. 

“I gotta ask you something,” Rhodes announced out of the blue, coming to stand with him. The man was out of his armor, this mission calling for a bit more finesse than the War Machine suit was capable of, but even in his fatigues, he looked formidable. 

Even so, Steve was hardly intimidated. “Shoot,” he invited indifferently, relatively certain that nothing the army man could say would surprise him. It was already obvious that the man hated him and had deemed him unworthy of being with his best friend; what else was there? 

“Why weren’t you with her, at the start?”

Steve thought the answer was obvious. “It was an emergency trip. I had to stay to look after Peter.”

“No,” Rhodes shook his head impatiently, as if his meaning should have been obvious. Maybe it would have been, to Toni, but Steve didn’t haves a Rhodes-reader installed in his brain. “I mean, back at the beginning. After the Battle of New York, and the nuke.” At his nonplussed expression, the military man narrowed his eyes and elaborated. “Toni was taking hits from the media and the WSC and then the shareholders on top of it all, for weeks after that battle. Through the entire thing, she stood alone, and she took every lash for every member of the team. Seemed to me, at the time, that you were only the face of the Avengers when it was someone singing praises.”

Steve felt something solid and heavy drop into his gut, making his stomach churn. In the weeks after that battle, he’d gone off the grid, attempting to reconcile his past with his present and also chase down some closure on the time he had lost by trying to reconnect with old friends and familiar places. It was only when he’d realized how pointless an endeavour that was, that he found his way to the Tower and into Toni’s – their – home. By that time, the negative publicity must have died down, because he hadn’t heard anything about it, but the thought of Toni ever facing so much hatred and vitriol without ever telling them how long she’d been doing it for them… it made him sick. 

Perhaps the look on his face was answer enough, because Rhodes frowned and guessed shrewdly, “You didn’t know?”

“I was off the grid until I came to the Tower,” Steve explained numbly, and though he knew it was irrational, he couldn’t help feeling guilty. If he’d known, he’d have never let her face that alone, even back then when they had been on such rocky terrain. 

Idly, he wondered whether that misunderstanding had any bearing on Rhodes’ intense dislike of him, but Steve dismissed the thought as soon as it formed. He knew exactly why the Lieutenant Colonel didn’t have any fondness for him; Rhodes had made his reasons perfectly clear back when Steve and Toni had first started dating…

 

_“No. No, no, no. Absolutely not.”_

_“Excuse me?” Toni narrowed her eyes dangerously at her best friend, and if Rhodes hadn’t been so vocally and vehemently against Steve and Toni as a couple, then the super soldier might have found it in himself to feel a shred of sympathy for the landmine the other man had just stepped on. “I don’t think there’s any part of ‘Hey, Rhodey! Me and Steve are dating now!’ that asked for your permission.”_

_“Doesn’t matter,” Rhodes shook his head, and apparently he was as thick as Steve was beginning to think he was. “I’m not giving my permission. In fact, I forbid it.”_

_Now, as an observer to the volleying argument between Toni and Rhodes, Steve could say with certainty that this was probably the point where everything went to shit. It was a rough start, on the part of the Lieutenant Colonel, but Steve was confident and secure enough in his budding relationship with Toni to know that this was just a speedbump. He wasn’t sure where his unwavering conviction was coming from, but for some reason, everything about his lover felt too right not to be sure about it._

_Crossing her arms over her chest, Toni moved to stand a little in front of Steve, as if to protect him. It made a smile flicker over his face. “Rhodey, honeybear, I love you,” she stated firmly, easily enough that Steve still managed to feel an inkling of irrational jealousy. That promptly went away with her following statement. “That being said, you’re not allowed to tell me who I can and can’t date. You’re not allowed to forbid me from anything, especially not something like this.”_

_“The hell I’m not!” Rhodes growled, and the sound made Steve react for the first time, blue eyes flashing as he closed the gap between him and Toni, ready to push her behind him if Rhodes took so much as a step towards her. Neither of the friends noticed it. “Listen to yourself! Do you even remember everything he said to you, and everything he managed to bring up for you since he woke up from his seventy-year nap?! Am I the only one here who’s remembering all that? What the fuck could have possibly changed for you to…”_

_Toni cut him off with a simple, “I’m in love with Steve.”_

_The words rocked Steve to his core. This was the first time that Toni had actually spoken the words since they’d gotten together… for all the times that he’d said it to her, directly or indirectly, the genius had more of a tendency to express her love in non-verbal ways, but right now… now, Steve had the words._

_And they sounded beautiful, to him._

_For her part, Toni looked almost serene as she said them. Her voice was firm and indisputable, but at the same time utterly tranquil, as if she was simply giving voice to a truth that she’d known all along and just kept close to her chest._

_Rhodes, on the other hand, was speechless and looked about as gobsmacked as Steve felt. For a long moment, nobody said anything, and Steve got the feeling that he wasn’t involved in the bubble that encased the two best friends just then. Some kind of silent conversation was happening between them that Steve didn’t have a hope of hearing, but for the first time, he didn’t feel jealous._

_Toni loved him._

_Toni was **in love** with him. _

_“I wanna talk to you.” Abruptly, Rhodes’ eyes were on Steve instead of Toni, and they were burning with a mixture of intensity and, what Steve had to guess was, restrained ire._

_Before Toni could object, Steve nodded, straightening his spine. “Fine. It’s alright, sweetheart,” he added in a soft rumble, when Toni snapped an unfathomable gaze towards him. “Promise.”_

_The genius seemed torn, understandably so, but after a lengthy reluctant pause, she nodded once and turned to leave. Before she did, she very pointedly lifted up on tip-toes and caught Steve’s lips in a slow and unhurried kiss. Without a backwards glance at Rhodes – who Steve smugly noted was in the proverbial dog house – she left the room._

_Leaving him and a highly irate older brother figure._

_“You’ve got some nerve, Rogers,” Jim started furiously. “I don’t care what either of you say, whatever the fuck this is? It’s not happening.”_

_Surprisingly, Steve felt more like smirking than knocking the other man out. “You honestly think that you can tell Toni what to do? How long have you known her?” Then, just to make his point crystal clear, he tacked on, “And for the record, you definitely aren’t about to tell me what to do, Lieutenant. I love her, and she’s mine. I hope you can get used to it, because I’m not leaving and I’m not letting her go, either.”_

_To his credit, Rhodes didn’t make a point of pulling rank on him, but a muscle in his jaw jumped tellingly. He was obviously spoiling for a fight. That was okay, because Steve wholeheartedly meant what he’d said; and there was nothing the man could do or say that would change anything._

_“I’ve protected that girl for most of our lives,” Rhodes bit off, fists clenched as he crossed his arms over an expansive chest. “From hired thugs trying to make a grab at her, to horndog assholes trying to roofie her, I have always had her back. What the hell makes you think that I can’t protect her from you?”_

_Steve swallowed slightly, not put off by Rhodes’ threats, but definitely nauseated at the allusion to just how much danger his girlfriend had faced in her life. If he’d had anything to say about it, Steve would have gladly traveled back in time to take a piece out of anyone who’d ever tried to hurt or take advantage of his girl._

_Driving the thoughts from his mind, lest they incense him further, Steve refocused on Rhodes. “You don’t have to protect her from me,” he stated resolutely. “I’d never do anything to hurt her, not intentionally.”_

_“And I suppose you’ll give me your word on that?” Rhodes asked sarcastically. “Forgive me, soldier boy, but your word means jack shit to me.”_

_Bristling, the blond tried to remind himself that he’d promised Toni not to throw her best friend out of the closest window. “Respectfully,” he forced the word through gritted teeth, “that isn’t my goddamn problem. She’s a grown woman who can make her own decisions. I don’t need your approval or permission or whatever you seem to think I’m asking for; we told you because Toni loves you. If you can’t respect her enough to accept her choice, that’s going to be between you and her.”_

_Now, Steve knew that he wasn’t at war, and he would never be so childish as to think of this as a competition, but… he thought he could safely say that he won that round. Rhodes went quiet as he fumed about everything, pacing a tight circle from the window, to the middle of the room and then back again. They both knew what conclusion he was going to reach – because no one could love Toni, and then disappoint her when she asked so little from those she loved – but Steve allowed the other man to brood and curse and finally reach it on his own._

_“I don’t like you,” he said finally, rounding on Steve but no longer looking like he was going take a swing. “You’re sanctimonious, judgmental, hard-headed, and I wouldn’t trust you with my coffee, let alone my best friend.” He paused, as if to let the words land, and when Steve didn’t so much as flinch under the onslaught, he huffed irritably. “I don’t trust you,” he repeated, leveling the super soldier with a hard stare. “And let me make one thing perfectly clear; if you ever hurt her, ever make her cry, or ever give her cause to feel any pain, you’ll be begging for me to just kill you already.”_

_With those parting words, he stomped past Steve and out of the room, presumably in search of Toni._

_Out of the blue, a crisply accented voice offered from overhead, “For whatever it might be worth, Captain, I do believe that Miss Stark has chosen her suitor quite wisely.”_

_Steve blinked, and then fairly beamed up at the ceiling, despite the amount of times that Toni had told him that JARVIS’ cameras and sensors weren’t there._

_“Thanks, JARVIS,” he grinned happily. It wasn’t a war, and again, he wouldn’t childishly call this a competition, but… Steve had definitely won._

 

They’d had it out for reasons entirely unrelated to the apparent media bashing that Toni had taken, but knowing that didn’t ease any of the regret that Steve felt. But it was over, he reminded himself wearily. In the past. There was no point thinking about it now. 

“I guess it makes sense.” Rhodes’ voice interrupted his thoughts. “Toni doesn’t usually cop to the things she does that can be remotely construed as caring.” Then, as an afterthought, the military man slanted him a glance and added, “I still don’t like you, though.”

Amazingly, Steve snorted a small laugh. “Yeah, don’t worry,” he replied amusedly, “I’m not gonna be makin’ you a friendship bracelet anytime soon.”

“Steve!”

Bruce’s frantic call did a stellar job of obliterating any sort of goodwill Steve was feeling. In an instant, the super soldier was there, Rhodes not far behind him. “What happened? What’s going on?”

“The echo caught an image of her,” Banner explained without preamble, tired eyes now brightened with anticipation and the promise of success. Behind him, Bucky crouched next to the crater, presumably to keep from adding any instability to the significant dent that Steve had made over the past few hours. “She’s closer from here, and there’s only a few layers of rubble left before we have a clear way down to her.”

Steve needed no more motivation than those words, and his heart fairly leaped with hope. “Get a harness ready,” he instructed Rhodes as Bruce took his non-verbal command to move the equipment away. With any luck, they wouldn’t need it again. “I’m not letting her climb any more than she has to. I’ll go down to her and bring her up. Buck,” he turned to his best friend when Rhodes happily didn’t argue with him. The ex-assassin had grim determination in his features and was already carefully sliding into the spot that Bruce had vacated. “Be careful,” was all Steve cautioned with, seeing that Bucky already knew without asking what he was meant to do. 

The same thing as Steve. Dig like their lives depended on it. 

And Steve’s did, in a sense. 

They worked in tandem, a smooth partnership that was oddly reminiscent of when they’d been kids. Renewed vigor pushing him, Steve barely felt the time before they finally broke the surface, and something resembling a vertical tunnel opened up. It would be tight, coming back up, but it was clear enough to Steve to be lowered down and bring Toni back up. 

The relief almost crippled him when Bucky produced a long-range flashlight (from where, Steve would never know) and pointed it into the inky expanse, to finally shine on Toni some-100 feet below them. 

Her face was smudged with dirt and blood, and usually bright amber eyes were now murky brown with a mixture of pain, disorientation, and probably a bone-deep fatigue. Steve knew that there were injuries he couldn’t quite see from his vantage point, and there was probably going to be a whole lot of comforting to be done on many counts, but she was _alive._ She was alive and she was there and she was doggedly hanging on by her last reserves because she had fought to come back to him, to their family. Steve knew right then that he couldn’t have possibly asked for anything more. 

He might have been a little choked up, but as she always did, Toni made it better. “Hey, sexy,” she called up, voice croaky and hoarse and weak, but blessedly vibrant with life. “You come here often?”

Steve laughed, a wet and trembling sound that could just as well have been a desperate mumbling of gratitude to every deity he could think of. 

“Oh, all the time,” he eventually answered, ignoring the shouting and chaos around him as his fellow rescuers worked double time to rig the safety harness for them. Tears dripped from his eyes but Steve couldn’t have cared less if he’d tried. “Jus’ been waitin’ for some beautiful brunette to come around and take my breath away.”

Toni leaned her head briefly against her arm, and even without the flashlight, Steve would have heard the hitching breath she tried to swallow from miles away. He shared in her dizzying relief, both of them connected in that moment by the sheer force thereof. 

Someone tapped his shoulder and Steve exhaled shakily. “Hold on, darling,” he instructed her, voice thick. “I’m coming down to get you, okay? I’m comin’, doll.” It took a Herculean effort to drag his eyes away from her, but the blond managed the feat, eyes fixing instead on the delicate structure around and beneath him as people strapped him up to the harness. 

Bucky, Rhodes, and a few other good Samaritans who had provided the rescue equipment, all worked different points in the rigged harness, lowering him achingly slow into his descent. It felt like it had taken eons, and Steve had held his breath the entire way, but impossibly, miraculously, amazingly, he finally reached her. 

With the gentlest touch he could muster, Steve wrapped an arm around her waist, steadying himself gingerly against the wall of debris and wondering absently how she’d managed to hold on so long, to something so unstable and impossibly small. “I got you, love,” he breathed, over and over again as he maneuvered her closer. “I got you. I got you.”

“Steve,” she rasped, saying his name like a supplication when finally, they’d managed to get her hooked up to his harness. Steve cradled his lover against his body, as if that would keep her from any more pain as they made the equally arduous ascent. “You got me,” she nodded, as if to confirm it, and slumped into his chest. “M’so tired.”

He swallowed painfully, tucking her face into his throat and kissing the top of her head with unfathomable gentleness. “I know, Toni, I know. But it’s okay now, I promise. I’m not gonna let anything hurt you anymore,” he vowed roughly, squeezing his eyes shut and praying that he wouldn’t have to break that promise anymore. 

They made the rest of their ascent in mutual silence, both simply relishing being in each other’s arms when they’d feared, for the better part of almost 27 hours, that they would never feel it again. The only break in the quiet was from the periodic sounds of Steve kissing Toni’s hair, her forehead, her temple; basically anything he could reach; to assure himself that she was safe and back in his arms. 

And then, finally, they reached the top.

“ _Sweetheart,_ oh, baby,” Steve murmured, aghast, as the harsh light of day brought all Toni’s injuries into sharp and devastating focus. Rhodes and Bucky began to take the harness off them, but Steve couldn’t focus on anything except the state of his girlfriend. A horrific looking gash had coated her arm and side in blood, and a nasty looking knot on the back of her head hinted at a concussion. Bruises decorated her body like a toddler had splashed paint with her body as the canvas. As if being trapped and having to crawl her way out wasn’t bad enough, she’d had to do it like this?

Her hand found his blindly, and Steve snapped out of his desolation when she squeezed it. “I reached out my hand… and you were there to take it,” Toni told him, voice achingly weak and breathless, but crystal clear. Love edged away the worst of the dullness in her eyes. 

“I promised you I would be.” Steve brought her carefully closer to him, still cradling her against him, and pressed his lips to her temple for a long moment. “I will always be there. But please, baby, don’t you ever do that to me again.”

There were people around them – medics and rescue workers and their friends – and a whole swarm of reporters with flashing cameras and screaming questions. Steve was pretty sure he even heard the distant sounds of the kid Toni had saved, trying to come forward. But just for one brief instant, nothing existed outside of him and the love of his entire existence. 

Toni responded with a fleeting brush of her lips against his. “Take me home,” she entreated quietly. “Let’s go home, Steve.”

Home. That sounded just about perfect. But first…

“You need to get checked by the medics, sweetheart,” he said, and it hit him like a gut-punch when Toni only nodded resignedly rather than arguing. 

Before he could douse himself in some irrational self-recrimination, Steve was distracted by his lover tapping his chest. “ _Tu sei il mio cuore, la mia anima, e la mia vita_ ,” she whispered, the Italian weaving whimsically through her voice, turning it musical. She smiled, something soft and beautiful flickering on her face. “You’re my heart and my soul and my life, Steve Rogers.”

Steve’s eyes fell shut as the words drifted to settle into his heart. He pressed his forehead to hers, no longer stunned at the way this woman seemed to be able to bring him to his knees with little more than a word. 

“ _Tu sei il mio cuore, la mia anima, e la mia vita,_ ” he repeated carefully, feeling more than seeing the smile lift her lips. “You’re my heart and my soul and my life, Toni Stark.”

 

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww, aren't they precious?! 
> 
> Another shout out to DarkPhoenix123, who figured out the Italian phrase! XD 
> 
> Again, I really hope everyone enjoyed the update! More fluffy reunions and homecomings soon...
> 
> Cheers!  
> -J <3


	8. Safe At Last

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all! So sorry for the super late update, but this chapter just didn't want to cooperate with me! I think Toni just didn't want it to be finished, but alas! Here it is, and this is the end! What started off as something I didn't think would exceed 20k works, became this 84k+ monster that I absolutely thrilled in navigating. I hope you guys did, too!
> 
> I really hope the reunions are everything you guys hoped for; this chapter is structured a little differently, because it's entirely Toni's point of view as she interacts with everyone. I tried to stay as true to the characters as possible (another thing that made this chapter hard to write) so I hope it's alright! 
> 
> A very special thank you to **Darkphoenix123** , who was kind enough to check up on me when the updates starting coming in slower, and in so doing, encouraged me to keep going! Thank you, lovely!
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

“Miss Stark, please…”

Toni glared stonily at the EMT, defiance radiating off her from the clench of her fists at her side to the stubborn set of her jaw. “What part of ‘No’ didn’t you understand, you overgrown…”

“Sweetheart.” Steve cut her off with an equally fond and exasperated look. “You agreed to get checked out by the medics. You’ve been to hell and back. If he thinks that you should go to the hosp-…”

“No means no.” She turned her glare towards her lover, but Toni was resigned to the fact that Steve was probably immune to it by now. “Look, I’m here, aren’t I?” Demonstratively, she pointed at her arm, where Kevin-the-paramedic was cleaning the blood and debris from the gouge that the beam had made through her flesh. “If somebody would be so kind as to stitch this thing up for me, I can be in the air in twenty minutes. Half an hour on the outside.”

Kevin-the-paramedic shot her a look of utter disbelief. “You have a moderate concussion, three cracked ribs, a miniature Grand Canyon ripped into your left bicep, and contusions and bruising to at least 70 percent of your body, and your first priority is getting on a plane?”

“You know, if you stitched me up while you were complaining, we could have been done here, already.”

“Toni, let’s be reasonable here,” Steve coaxed, and pinned her with those lethally big blue eyes; an expression he damn well knew was a weakness of hers. “What if something happens on the flight home and I don’t know how to help?”

Oh, she was on to him. Softening her up with those earnest eyes, targeting her natural desire to protect him from helplessness by focusing on his reaction if something were to go wrong… everyone thought Steve was about as manipulative as a butterfly, but she had his number. Sneaky little jerk.

Her lifeline approached her in human form. “Brucie bear!” she fairly beamed at her fellow scientist, and the brunet stopped warily in his tracks a few paces away from her. “Bruce will be there the entire time, he can handle anything that might happen,” she stated confidently, unrepentant even when Steve aimed a glare at the hapless scientist. 

“I keep repeating it,” Bruce sighed long-sufferingly as he continued towards them, “but I don’t think you hear me when I say that I’m _not that kind of doctor.”_

It was telling of the affection between the pair that, despite his words and her hassling, Bruce still critically examined the work that the medic had done thus far, and ever so carefully began helping by cleaning cuts that hadn’t yet been treated by Kevin-the-stupid-paramedic (the amendment to his nickname well-deserved to Toni’s thinking). His exceedingly gentle touch told her volumes more about his worry for her than Bruce himself would have done. 

Refocusing on Steve, Toni took her argument back up. “I’m not going to sit in a hospital just so that they can tell me I was lucky, and I need to take it easy for a while.”

“You _were_ lucky,” her lover replied somberly, the fear causing darkness to creep over his expression. “And you _do_ need to take it easy.”

“What I need, is to keep a promise that I made to my son,” Toni stated with firm finality in her voice, when she realized that there was no option left but to be entirely blunt. “A promise I made to _our_ son. I can’t do that from a hospital.”

The words worked as they were intended to; comprehension dawned over Steve’s face and something close to empathy eased the combative stance that Kevin-the-stupid-paramedic had fallen into. For his part, Bruce didn’t falter for half a breath as he worked on her injuries, but the genius didn’t miss the shuffling motion that brought him a little closer to her. 

For a long moment, Toni held Steve’s gaze, meeting turbulent blue with calm and steady amber. 

She knew those eyes with the same type of familiarity that one had with their favourite book, or a well-watched movie. It was easy for her to read the fear there; fear that she knew hadn’t left Steve since he’d first heard of the incident. She’d seen it plenty times before on his face, and some of those times not even in the field. It was one of her least favourite looks on her super soldier. 

There was anguish that made the fear seem even darker; shadowed it, like a dark cloud that made all the bad things even worse. She knew that it would be a two-pronged stake to the heart for Steve, no less: the first, because of the residual horror from what they’d just been through, and the second because of the torment over the evidence of it on Toni. Steve’s fears had been confirmed when he’d finally seen her in the harsh light of day. Not the worst fears, of course, but enough to leave him feeling needlessly tortured over her injuries. 

But for all the bad feelings, there was also understanding there. It didn’t surprise her because out of everyone, herself included, it always seemed like Steve was the one person who had the deepest understanding of Toni’s relationship with Peter. At times when she didn’t even understand it herself, Steve somehow did. He had yet to be surprised by the level of love and devotion that Toni had shown towards being a mother, even when people like Rhodey and Pepper and Happy still expressed some level of reservation. Even when Toni _herself_ still did. He didn’t even bat an eyelid about her first priority being getting back home to her son. 

And then there was the love. That was something that was always present in his eyes when Steve looked at her, and something that Toni hoped would be present for the rest of their lives. Hoped that she could never do something to make that love absent when he looked upon her. 

Steve’s face settled into a familiar look of determination. Whatever decision he’d taken in that charged moment between them, Toni knew, would not be swayed or fought with any argument. 

Stepping in front of her and resting his hands on her knees, Steve leaned forward and pressed his lips against her temple. Once, twice, three times, a line down to the top of her jaw. “No hospital,” he stated as he pulled away from her, a voice of low command that belonged to the Captain. Steely blue eyes rested on the appropriately intimidated paramedic. “Take care of her as thoroughly and gently as you can here. Doctor Banner will assist you.”

Without giving Kevin-the-stupid-paramedic a chance to protest, Steve shifted to face Toni again, all softness and warmth. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart.” He spoke the words like a vow, and without asking, the genius knew that Steve needed to say it far more than she’d needed to hear it. “I need to have a talk with one of the reporters.”

“Uh-oh.” Toni made a face, trying to elicit a smile from Steve and bring him back from whatever he had heard with his superior senses that had incited his temper. “Are you going to give them the “Captain America Is Disappointed In You” dressing down, or the “Captain America Is Going To Strike You Down” tirade?”

It worked to an extent; Steve sent her a wry little smile that that seemed to say her efforts were noted and appreciated. “Neither,” he answered as he took a few steps towards the barricade that had been put up between them and the crowds and media circus. “I’m gonna give them the “Steve Rogers Is Gonna Swing Back If Anyone Swings At His Girl Again” threat. It’s a little more graphic than the usual,” he added, a hint of cheekiness in the smirk her threw back at her. 

“Sexy,” Toni murmured with a grin, and knew that he’d heard her when Steve barked out a laugh, shaking his head as he crossed the distance to the crowd. Although she generally insisted on protecting herself from the vapid reporters and soul-sucking story-chasers, Toni decided to let it go. Steve needed to shield her more than she needed to be shielded, today, and besides… she liked when he called her his girl. 

Not that she would ever admit it out loud. 

As if he’d been waiting for Steve to leave before coming over, Rhodey suddenly came into her line of sight. Toni wasn’t naïve enough to believe that it was a coincidence; she’d actually caught on relatively quickly to the tension that simmered between her lover and her pseudo brother; but it was mildly exasperating to have proof that it was still going on. Honestly, she couldn’t pretend to be oblivious to it that much longer… or, well, she could, but it would solve precisely no one’s problems. 

A problem for another day, she decided, and sent Rhodey a wan smile. “If you’re about to yell, I should warn you that it might bring my overprotective Captain down on your head,” she teased, her words completely negated by the emotion that she knew had come into her eyes. 

“Shi-it,” Rhodey scoffed irreverently, dragging the word into two syllables as he returned her smile with a little smirk. “Tall, blond and brooding doesn’t scare me.”

To Toni’s surprise, Bruce answered before she could. “Don’t take this personally, Jim,” he preceded his words with his typically placid smile, “but as a man who’s pretty intimately familiar with the phrase ‘being on the edge’, take it from me; Steve’s been there since he got that phone call from Ms. Potts.” As he spoke, Bruce finished up his careful wrapping of her ribs, fingers so gentle against her that they brought only comfort. His touch was far preferable to her than the medic’s; not because Kevin-the-stupid-paramedic was particularly rough with her – indeed, it seemed like he was taking great pains to be as gentle as he could, lest he bring the wrath of half of the Avengers down upon him – but because there was a distinct difference between his cold and impersonal touch, as opposed to Bruce’s warm, caring, loving one. She felt safer with her fellow scientist; a notion that he’d always expressed shy bemusement over whenever she’d voiced it. 

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Bruce softly and tactfully redirected the EMT to fetch some supplies, and smoothly made the transition to continue stitching the large gash in her arm. 

“I’ll take that under advisement, Dr. Banner,” Rhodey replied amicably, and Toni hoped she was the only one who knew him well enough to see the hidden disregard in his eyes. If not for her, Toni knew, Rhodes wouldn’t have hesitated to pick a fight with Steve. Something they, no doubt, needed to talk through. 

If Bruce noticed anything amiss, he didn’t say so; only finished stitching her up skillfully and quickly while Rhodey took up the seat he’d vacated. Toni rested her head automatically against her best friend’s shoulder and Rhodes responded by wrapping an arm carefully around her. 

They sat in silence until Bruce tied off his last stitch, and without needing to be asked, the scientist quietly excused himself after pressing a gentle kiss to Toni’s cheek. Rhodey waited until Bruce was out of earshot before he spoke, but Toni wasn’t sure whether that was intentional, or incidental while the military man regained composure. She was leaning towards the former, until she heard the shaky inhalation from Rhodey that spoke of his own fear since he’d heard about her predicament. 

So quietly that she wondered if he’d hear her, Toni mumbled, “I’m sorry I scared you.” 

It was the truest words she could have spoken, because both of them would have heard the falsehood in it, if she’d apologized for her actions. A little boy’s life had been spared with her intervention, and there was no way Toni would trivialize that by even feigning remorse. What she was apologetic for, was the fear she’d caused her family. 

“You should be,” Rhodes replied a little roughly, and Toni didn’t take the tone personally. In all the time they’d known each other, it was old news to the genius that Rhodey didn’t deal well with being afraid, especially when he was afraid for someone else. Case in point, when his mother had been ill, or the stories of what a nightmare he’d become in the months that Toni had been missing in Afghanistan. It was, she knew, Rhodey’s biggest fear that something would happen to someone he loved, and he would be powerless to stop it. “When Pepper called me… I’ve only had that feeling a handful of times before in my life, Tones,” he said frankly, and there was unabashed pain in his eyes when he shifted to look at her. “Hated it every damn time.”

She didn’t need to ask; already knew that she made up the majority of times he’d felt that way. “He’s just a little boy, Rhodey,” Toni murmured, mind automatically going to Peter. 

“You don’t need to justify yourself to me,” he replied mildly, and Toni had enough presence of mind to feel chastised. Of course she knew that her best friend required no explanation; he simply vented his frustration by way of acceptance. 

“I wish I could have spared you the worry,” she amended, and knew that those words had more of an impact as Rhodey’s eyes softened. In a tender gesture that wasn’t out of place between them, the Lieutenant Colonel raised his other arm to engulf her in a gentle, but secure embrace. She heard more words from that gesture than she had from him: _You scared me_ and _I’m proud of you_ and _I wish I could take away your pain_ and _Nothing else will hurt you, not while I’m here and I’ve got you._

For all the wordless communication that could pass between them, Toni also heard one more thing. “You have to go, don’t you?”

Rhodey, sensitive to Toni’s express desire to keep her vulnerable moments out of the public eye, never usually approached her for this kind of talk while she was still in relative range of the vultures. It stood to reason to her that, in this instance, it was unavoidable because he wouldn’t be able to accompany her back to the tower, where they could have hashed this out a lot more animatedly in her workshop or somewhere equally secured. 

The only thing that could have called her best friend away from her now, was his duty. 

Drawing away, Toni didn’t fully register her brow knitting with concern. “Is it an assignment?” she asked solemnly. It was never any easier to let Rhodey go off into dangerous territories, not before or after knowing what she did and having felt what she’d felt, but Toni had long ago mastered the art of composure. Regardless of how she felt about it, she would never do anything but gracefully relent to watching Rhodey go, her heart in her throat and a fervent prayer to a God she didn’t believe in on her lips. 

And it went without saying that Rhodey knew exactly how graceless the emotions inside Toni ran when he left. 

“Just a training session,” he assured her softly. In truth, they both knew that he would say exactly that, whether his call to return was dangerous or not, and dimly, Toni could appreciate his natural inclination to keep her from worry. 

It was pointless, because she would worry nevertheless, but it was appreciated. 

She nodded once, schooling her features as she did every time he had to leave. “Try not to do anything stupid, please?” Toni deliberately made her voice flippant and indifferent. “I have no interest in taking time off work to bail your ass out of trouble.”

Lies. All of it, blatant lies, and Rhodey knew it as well as she did, but there was something to be said about keeping to traditions between them. 

“Funny, I was about to tell you the same thing,” he retorted, chucking her softly underneath her chin. And then, because even tradition could be altered after she’d nearly died, he stood in front of her, shielding her from the crowds, and gathered her to his chest. “You’re gonna be okay?” he asked softly.

Toni swallowed, grateful for the cover and solidity of Rhodey’s strong chest. “’Course,” she confirmed, equally quiet. “I always am. You?”

“Always am,” Jim parroted back, and a soft kiss landed atop her head. After a moment of silence, Rhodes hesitantly spoke. “Say the word, baby girl.”

God help her, but Toni was tempted to. Ever since MIT, whenever Rhodey had left to go somewhere, be it back home to check on his mother, or to some get-together Toni hadn’t been up for, or after they’d graduated, whenever he’d shipped out anywhere, Rhodey would ask Toni to say the word: _Stay_. If she ever did, Rhodey would drop whatever it was and stay, no questions asked. She wasn’t sure when exactly that promise had been made between them – because certainly, it went both ways – but they’d honored it religiously ever since. 

She’d only asked him twice before; once, right after she was rescued from The Ten Rings, and the second, after Obi had tried to kill her; and Rhodey had asked her three times, all of them back when she’d first taken up the helm of the company and had been expected to oversee a few dangerous weapons displays, and so Toni knew that if she asked him to now, her best friend wouldn’t hesitate. 

But the promise was a sacred and precious thing between them, which was why they only used it sparingly. Toni couldn’t bring herself to take advantage of it, especially when it could create a precedent for herself; there was the distinct risk that she wouldn’t let Rhodey leave for a mission again. Which wouldn’t have been fair to him, and Toni couldn’t have asked him to. 

So, instead of giving in to her desire to say the word, Toni murmured a familiar phrase. “Maybe next time, honeybear.”

Rhodey nodded, and Toni knew she did the right thing when she felt his muscles relax. She didn’t take it personally; if it were up to him, she knew, Rhodes would have stayed, but it was impossible for him to put his wants and needs above that of somebody else’s. That honor, that nobility, those were the qualities that made him the phenomenal man and soldier that he was. 

“Stay out of trouble, Tones. I mean it,” he playfully scolded as he pulled away, and Toni rolled her eyes in response. Over his shoulder, she saw Steve waiting patiently until they were done. 

“Hey, Sugarplum? Do you think you could stop treating the love of my life like some kind of parolee?” she asked, hoping to catch Rhodey off-guard and succeeding as he spluttered slightly, making her grin. “Seriously. I don’t want to one day explain to Peter that Uncle Rhodey only hates Dad on principal.”

Grinning back, Rhodes dipped his head and kissed her forehead before retreating. “I’ll think about it,” he promised, and winked at her as he tapped the homing bracelet she’d added to his recent upgrade on the armor. On cue, his armor landed behind him before gently encasing him within it. It made something melancholy pang inside Toni, for the armor she’d had to scavenge, and she made a mental note to make sure all the pieces were collected and sent back to her workshop. It wouldn’t do for that technology to be in anyone else’s hands. 

Swallowing against the lump that lodged in her throat as Rhodey flew away, Toni told herself that he would be okay; she’d certainly taken all the possible precautions to ensure that, when she’d upgraded his armor. Turning her attention to her lover instead, a smile quirked her lips when Toni recognized the satisfied look in his eyes. 

“Put the fear of Captain America in them?” she teased as he got closer, moving her arm slightly to test the stitches. They held admirably, but hurt like a sonofabitch, as she’d known they would. 

“Something like that,” Steve replied cryptically, and Toni wondered whether her lover was going to need a lawyer. Before she could ask, her supersoldier zeroed on to the mottled mess that was her left bicep, and grimaced. “Have you taken anything for that?” he asked, sounding like he already knew the answer as he reached out to grasp her elbow, acting as a temporary brace. 

Toni leaned against him, fatigue edging out her reserves. “Bruce is getting something, I think,” she answered noncommittedly, scanning the crowds from the relative safety of the gurney she was sat upon, strategically positioned so that the people and the cameras couldn’t get a clear sight of her. She didn’t want Peter, or Nat, Clint and Thor to see her on TV, looking far worse than she actually was, and worry unnecessarily. 

Steve pressed his lips to her temple, and for a long moment, kept them there. Later, when they were safe at home and away from watchful eyes in the privacy of their bedroom, Toni knew the relief would hit him full force. There would be a variety of emotions, spilling from both of them in an inarticulate outpouring, and there would be pleas, promises, prayers, uttered mindlessly between them as they rode the storm out together. Reaffirmed that they hadn’t lost each other. Ensured that they’d seen through another too-close call. 

Toni wondered whether Steve knew that his free hand grasped her wrist, fingers pressed against her pulse point. 

“Hey, Shellhead! You up for a visitor?”

Lifting her head, the genius had a quick retort for Bucky poised on her lips, but it fell away when she spotted Maico in the brunet’s arms. Toni forced one of her trademark grins over her face, expertly clearing all fatigue and pain from her expression. 

“Miss Toni!” Maico all but leaped from Bucky’s arms, and despite knowing that the soldier’s grip wouldn’t falter, Toni adjusted herself accordingly and caught Maico, pulling the little boy on to her lap and rigidly avoiding flinching from the horrific pain that streaked up her arm at the jolt. 

He nestled as close to her as he had before, and on the bright side, it took the pressure off her injured arm. “Hey, honey.” She cuddled him gently, pressing her lips to the top of his head. “Are you okay? Did the suit protect you while you came back up?”

“I’m okay,” he confirmed with a happy nod, snuggling closer still. With a gentleness that not many his age possessed, Maico touched his fingers to the top of her arm, just above the first stitch. “You got hurt without it. I’m sorry.”

She tipped his head up with a finger until he looked at her, and not at the gruesome looking collage of black stitches, pale skin and residual blood. “Barely a scratch, honey,” she lied smoothly, and grinned to add credence to the falsehood. “But I’ll feel a lot better if I get a proper look at that smile…” she trailed off, before tickling him gently. Predictably, Maico squirmed on her lap and shrieked with laughter, and it was only a wealth of experience doing this with Peter when he was sad, that allowed Toni to maneuver herself so that her ribs and arm didn’t get jostled too badly. 

“Maico Santino Navarro, can’t you see Miss Toni is very tired?” A woman bustled forward and if not for the scolding, the strong familial resemblance would have given her away as Maico’s mother. She spoke in rapid-fire Spanish that took Toni a second to get into the rhythm of. “Come now, no jumping on her!”

Smiling faintly at the woman, Toni shook her head once in reassurance. “That’s alright, he’s okay. He’s not much older than my own son, so I’m used to this,” she said, and if Maico’s mother was surprised by her fluency in Spanish, she graciously refrained from showing it. 

“I owe you a great debt, Miss Stark.” The woman took her hand, a grave look on her face. Tears shimmered in her eyes and it discomforted Toni far more than her son’s leap into her arms had. “You saved my son’s life, at the great risk of your own. You’ve saved my own heart in doing so. There’s nothing I can do or say to repay that.”

Even as she spoke, Toni was shaking her head, trying awkwardly to use her free hand to pat Mrs. Navarro’s shoulder consolingly. _Bastard_ , Toni thought with absent fondness when she spotted Steve taking a discreet step back. This part of the job was too often laid on his shoulders, so the supersoldier tended to enjoy it when the rest of them had to muddle through the gratitude and tears.

“There’s no repayment necessary,” she told the woman firmly, shifting Maico in her arms so that the strain lessened on her aching muscles. “You have a wonderful son, and I’m just grateful I could return him to you.”

Tears slipped freely down the woman’s face now, but she gathered enough composure to slip a delicate looking chain off her neck. A pendent roughly the size of a quarter hung from it, and she pressed the medallion into Toni’s free hand. 

“There is a tradition in my family, to give this to a new mother,” she explained, and Toni had to listen carefully to the Spanish, lest she lose any of the explanation in translation. “This is a medallion of Saint Monica; she is said to be the patron saint of motherhood. I can think of none worthier of wielding the mother’s symbol than you, Toni Stark.” 

Emotion stole Toni’s words. She knew, intuitively, that this gift wasn’t one that she could refuse or return; there was meaning behind it, an unassailable intent that was unspoken but understood, from one mother to another.

So instead of speaking, Toni only dipped her head forward, allowing the other woman to slip the medallion around her neck. And following that same instinct, the only thing she could do, was hug both Navarros as they looped their arms around her in heartbreakingly earnest gratitude. 

 

###

 

Not for the first time, Toni patted herself on the back for having the foresight to design the Quinjet for both speed and comfort. 

Too often, a member (or members) of their merry band of misfits were hurt in the line of duty, and Toni had taken that into account when she’d been elbow-deep in specs and designs for the fastest, most durable weaponized jet in the history of flight. Things like shock-absorption and a basics-equipped medical area were as key in her designs as the flight stabilizers and impact-proof propellers. The end product had been one of her proudest inventions, and she’d never appreciated it as much as she did right at that moment. 

She drifted in and out of awareness, Steve and Bruce taking turns to keep her just conscious enough to stay awake. Exhaustion weighed her body down like a load of bricks and pain was a constant companion but she couldn’t sleep; Bruce was too leery about her concussion and in all honesty, Toni wasn’t sure that she’d be able to drudge up the energy to wake up after a mere few hours, if she slept now. 

Bruce kept her mind alert by shooting theories past her; discussing his latest project and a few new ideas he’d had while she’d been away; and Steve kept her spirits up with stories about Peter, and the rest of the Avengers, and home. Unfortunately, her companions hadn’t factored in their own fatigue and the adrenaline crash they’d had to face eventually, and it amused Toni to no end when she found Bruce passed out awkwardly where he was sat, and Steve nodding off as she spoke, stretched out on the bed next to her. 

Toni kept speaking; an absent-minded rundown on the progress of her meeting before everything had gone to hell in a handbasket around them; until Steve slipped fully into sleep. As much as he wanted to, and had been taking care of her, Toni felt it equally imperative that she look out for him, and supersoldier or not, Steve didn’t function well, going on 36 hours with no sleep. 

She, on the other hand, was as well-acquainted with sleep deprivation as Thor was with poptarts. 

With slow movements, Toni slipped soundlessly off the bed and out of the sectioned off medical area. She could keep herself awake; had done it most of her life, anyway; and the more important thing at that moment, was letting Bruce and Steve get some sleep. 

Hobbling sluggishly towards the front of the jet, Toni figured she could keep company with Bucky while her lover and science bro rested. The former assassin, like herself, was a little more tolerant of sleep deprivation than the others, and it wouldn’t have been the first time that they’d kept each other awake in the interest of finishing a project or warding off nightmares or a flashback.

He turned as she came into view, and even though he smiled, Toni could read the concern in his eyes. “Come to co-pilot?” he asked teasingly.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Snowflake,” Toni said mock-haughtily, lowering herself gingerly on to the seat next to Bucky’s. “I’m nobody’s co-pilot. _You’re_ the co-pilot.”

“Technically, I am the co-pilot, Miss Stark, Sergeant Barnes.” JARVIS’ voice came overhead, a typical mix of dry amusement and smug snark. Toni never ceased to be amazed by him. 

Bucky slanted a smirk at her. “I think your AI just scolded us.”

“Scolded you, maybe,” Toni sniffed imperiously. “JARVIS adores me.” She grinned when the words earned her a snort of amusement from her companion. 

For all their banter, Toni had enough experience to tell when some of the darkness was ebbing closer to the edges of Bucky’s mind, and this was one of those times. It wasn’t unusual, as the supersoldier tended to shoulder guilt in any form when one of them got hurt, even more so with Steve and Toni, and long ago, the genius had resolved to keep him out of that dark space. She knew all too well what it was like to carry blame on one’s shoulders; it was a toxic thing that could just as easily break a person as a physical blow could. 

For a little while, they joked back and forth, and gradually, the heaviness surrounding Bucky lifted. It helped Toni as well, giving her something to focus on other than the pain and weariness.

Finally, it was Bucky who shifted their light conversation to something deeper. “You scared the fuck out of us, you know?” he said without preamble. A wry smile twisted Toni’s lips – it was just like Bucky to strike right to the heart of the matter without any warning at all – but she heard the residual pain in his voice clearly enough not to make light of the words. 

“I scared the fuck out of myself,” she admitted instead, more candid than she usually was. Habitually, she raised a hand to rub the spot just above her right eye; a thoughtless motion that spoke to her own battered mindset. “I kept thinking of Peter and Steve, and all the rest of you guys, and how many ways things could’ve gone wrong… it was a nightmare.”

Maybe it was the frankness of her answer, or maybe it was his own relief staggering him, but Bucky wordlessly switched the Quinjet to autopilot, shifted in place, and gathered her close to his chest. It was different from Steve’s hugs, and yet also different from Rhodey’s; Bucky had claimed a category entirely his own in her heart, and had since the day he’d come to the tower. In her less guarded moments, usually softened by sleepiness, Toni sometimes imagined he was a mix of best friend and brother-in-law, but suffice to say, that thought had never seen the light of day. 

Undefined though it may have been, it was exactly what she needed, and Toni shuddered out a breath that was equal parts relief and residual anxiety from the entire ordeal. Bucky held her closer still, thumb rubbing soothing circles at the base of her neck, not dissimilar to what she used to do for him when the Winter Soldier was too close to the surface for him to be comfortable with. 

“You got yourself out of there,” he reminded her, and Toni wasn’t sure whether it was for her benefit or his. Possibly both. “You’re safe, now.”

_It wasn’t myself I was most worried for._

Toni didn’t voice the thought, because she didn’t think either of them needed to dwell on what could have been, but it was the unfiltered truth. She’d faced death so many times in her relatively short life that it no longer scared her. That wasn’t to say that she wanted to die; not at all, not since becoming Iron Woman, at least; but at the same time, her mortality was an incontrovertible thing that Toni didn’t feel the need to fear. Death, as far as she was concerned, was what happened to the people who were left behind. 

She would be leaving behind a family, now, if the unthinkable should come to pass. She’d have to leave Peter; her son, who’d lost so much in his tender six years already, and didn’t deserve to lose another person. She’d have to leave Steve, who’d given up so much for the world, for this job of theirs, and who she knew would find a way to shoulder the blame and break his own heart. The thought of that alone was enough to cripple her, enough to turn her cold right to her bones, and that was even before she thought of Rhodey and Pepper. Of Nat and Clint and Bucky and Bruce. Thor. Coulson. Loki. Even Fury, to an extent. 

So, no. She didn’t fear death, but Toni deeply feared leaving behind those who she’d come to love so deeply and completely. 

She didn’t realize she’d begun to tremble slightly, until Bucky spoke. “Do you want me to get Steve?” he asked softly, so gently that it made irrational emotion surge in her chest. 

“No, it’s okay,” she pulled away, taking a breath to steady herself. Smiled shakily at him. “I’m okay. Just got ambushed by everything for a second.”

It was times like this that Toni was most aware of how much she’d opened up since Steve had burst his way into her life. Before, the very idea of leaning on someone who wasn’t Rhodey or Pepper was inconceivable; who else was there in the world that she could trust like them? 

If someone had told her then, that she would develop that trust with a former assassin, two world class spies, a mythical God and the famously unreachable Doctor Banner, she would have demanded they take a sobriety test. And that would have been before anyone said anything about Captain America being the love of her life, with whom she would adopt a son. 

And yet Toni could hardly remember how she lived a life without all of them in it. 

She smiled faintly when Bucky leaned over to kiss her forehead. “She’s up in front,” he called out randomly, and after a beat, Toni realized that his enhanced hearing had picked up Steve waking up in a relative panic, probably for finding her gone. A bare moment later, she laid eyes on her lover, blue eyes still glazed over slightly in a mix of unawareness and alarm, and watched as calm returned with the sight of her safe and present. 

“Don’t worry,” Steve told her as he crossed the distance, voice still rough from sleep. “I’m pretty sure JARVIS is doing most of the piloting.”

Bucky reached over to punch Steve’s bicep in retaliation for the dig, and Toni smiled softly at the interaction between them. Strangely enough, as they began to bicker good-naturedly, that more than anything made her feel like the nightmare was finally over. 

 

###

 

An irate Black Widow striding towards Toni the minute she got off the Quinjet, was not an auspicious start to arriving home.

Wisely, she angled her sling-supported arm in front of her, almost wishing that Bruce hadn’t bandaged and braced it before they’d arrived. If anything, the mottled mess might have thrown Natasha off long enough for Toni to make a break for it. 

Thankfully, the sling was enough, and the redhead slowed her stride. Concern registered in her eyes for a brief moment before the irritation returned, but it was enough to show Toni that the anger was a surface emotion; favoured over the fear, she supposed. 

“When you get better, I’m going to kill you,” Nat informed her coolly, arms crossed over her chest as she stopped in front of Toni. There was a time when the genius might have believed that, and possibly gotten her back up about it, but even super spies had their tells. Nat’s was the way her jaw ticked after she clenched it from worry. 

So instead of cowering, Toni simply wound her good arm around Nat and pulled her into a hug. “No, you’re not,” she refuted sunnily. “You love Peter too much.” 

It was odd that Toni’s way of being a good friend, was to refrain from pointing out that Nat loved Toni too much to hurt her, too. 

“Twelve more years,” the redhead grumbled, but hugged back with infinite care. “When that kid leaves, you’ll be fair game.” 

Toni laughed thickly even as another wave of emotion flooded through her. She was grateful for the clouds that covered the vast majority of the night sky, because she was pretty sure that the starlight would have made the tear that fell down her cheek glisten ostentatiously. As it were, Nat was the only one that felt it soak into her shoulder, and her only response was to hold on to Toni tighter, a wordless commiseration of the fluctuating feelings that came from a close call like this one. 

When she recovered, Toni shuffled back. “In my defense, I kept my promise,” she pointed out helpfully, tapping Nat’s wristwatch. It was just shy of eight-fifteen; not too long after Peter’s bedtime. 

“Good. He’s waiting,” Natasha said unnecessarily, stepping away as Steve wrapped an arm around Toni. The supersoldier was harboring the not-so-discreet fear that she was going to collapse before making it inside; a fear not unfounded, she grudgingly conceded, given her exhaustion and extensive injuries. 

Bucky took up his place on her other side while Bruce hovered behind her, and it felt ridiculously like she was being herded into the elevator. It made uneasiness prickle underneath her skin, and absently, Toni wondered how long it was going to take before she went berserk with all the careful treatment. She’d never done very well as a patient, and handled persistent protectiveness with even less grace. 

All things considered, she’d let it go for a little while. Just long enough for everyone’s fears to ebb away. 

Her concession notwithstanding, it still thrilled her to no end when she was barely a foot out of the elevator before an air shaft popped soundlessly open, and Clint dropped to the ground in front of them. 

Pain rippled over her after she automatically tensed, but Toni couldn’t help laughing at the typical entrance of their resident archer. It was so endearingly normal that she loved him all the more for it. 

Regrettably, her bodyguards seemed to feel differently, and Bucky actually growled. “Do you have a death wish, Barton?” he demanded, but a quick glance slid towards the former assassin showed Toni that he hadn’t drawn a weapon. Progress was progress, after all, she noted with approval. 

“Only if Toni’s the one to take me out,” Clint quipped back faux flirtatiously, batting his eyelashes ridiculously at her as he clutched his chest.

Steve growled audibly, despite the relative regularity of Toni and Clint playfully pretending to flirt with each other, and the genius took the liberty of derailing any possible tension by reaching out and using her good arm to pull the archer into a quick hug, without actually leaving the protective circle of Steve’s arms. 

Jokes aside, there was no denying the raw relief that Toni could feel coming off Hawkeye in waves as he carefully hugged her back. “I missed you, too, Birdbrain,” she told him fondly, granting him a soft grin as she pulled away. Then, remembering the conversation she’d had with Peter before this entire mess, the inventor narrowed her eyes. “But you should know, as soon as I’m cleared by Banner, I’m gonna kick your Hawk-ass for teaching my son to climb to one of the highest shelves in the pantry.”

“That kid is going to be the reason I die,” Barton muttered under his breath, feigning exasperation even through the affection in his eyes. Wisely, he hoisted himself back up into the air shaft before Steve could make a move on him, and Toni only laughed when he called out a hasty, “I’m happy you’re home safe, Robo-Girl,” before disappearing once more. 

There was going to be moments in the near future; of this she had no doubt; when she would be recuperating in her workshop, or her office, or the sitting room on her and Steve and Peter’s floor, and the air shafts would creak tellingly as the archer kept a silent and subtle eye on her to make sure that she was okay and safe, and then there would be moments still when she would find him on the roof at odd hours because he was anxious about something happening to her or one of the rest of the team like that again, but all of that would happen without the captive audience they had at the moment. Clint tended to play his cards as close to the chest as Toni herself did, which was why that mutual understanding existed between them in the first place. 

Just as a mutual understanding existed between her and Thor, that the Thunder God would not storm her with his boisterous hugs without any warning. 

As it were, she had plenty of warning as Thor stepped out into the hallway of their floor, looking far removed from his usual cheery self. For the first time since she’d known him, Thor looked like some of his real age was showing, stress and worry and dejection and helplessness all chipping away at what sometimes seemed like eternal youthfulness. His eyes were dulled and his posture imbued with the weight of powerlessness until those strong shoulders seemed almost slumped. 

If she hadn’t realized it before, then that image would have been a glaringly obvious sign that she’d really put her family through the mill this time. Toni couldn’t help feeling guilt, like lashes across her back, even as she knew that she couldn’t in good conscience regret her actions. 

But if that guilt manifested like welts, Thor’s beaming smile when he saw her was definitely a salve; it was like watching the sun come out, which might have been an insult to the God of Thunder, but was a wholly accurate description and the best Toni could liken it to. 

He closed the distance between them with big strides to go with his big grin. “Lady Stark!” Toni braced herself, and without preamble, Thor engulfed her in his arms. Miracle of miracles, his hold was exceptionally careful, likely seeing that she was hardly fit for enthusiasm in any nature. “You have triumphed in your battle! I had no doubts, I assure you,” he said as he pulled back, and Toni grinned in amused disbelief. 

“Liar,” she accused him mildly, the smirk on her face softening the response. Her grin widened when he sent her a sheepish smile and Toni swallowed down a laugh, knowing that her ribs certainly wouldn’t thank her for it if she didn’t. 

“I may have doubted,” Thor admitted, still looking as jovial and guileless as a puppy. “Once. Possibly twice. But it is a mistake I will be sure not to repeat,” he added, softening visibly. Dipping, he pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek. When he drew back, some measure of solemnity had darkened his eyes, and it was one of the rare times that Thor had ever deigned to be serious, so she listened. “You were missed, Toni, verily. And though I applaud your actions as a warrior, I must beseech you as family, not to scare us like that again.” 

He spoke gravely, the words simple and unadorned, and yet it touched Toni deeply in its straightforwardness. Pride and the spirit of a Norse God made Thor equally averse to admitting things like fear or weakness, and that in itself told the genius enough about how much he cared for her; as if she’d needed a reminder. 

And then there was the simple distinction of being family; something that never threatened to awe Toni like the first time she’d created something out of virtually nothing. 

Nodding silently, not trusting her words, Toni hoped that Thor understood how much his words meant to her. How happy she was to be home, to have survived to come back to them. 

When she felt like she could manage it, Toni softly asked, “Is Peter asleep?”

“He lies awake,” Thor smiled knowingly, stepping aside to clear the path to the door. To her son. “He was adamant that a magic wish would return his mother home in time to tuck him in… I shan’t be so quick to dismiss his wisdom in the future,” the Thunder God nodded somberly, but there was a sparkle in his eyes that Toni didn’t miss, and it made her wonder whether Peter had shared the story of the 11:11 wishes she’d told him, what seemed like ages ago now. 

“Well, then… if no one minds, I’ll be tucking my son in, now,” she announced quietly, too many emotions fighting for dominance inside her, to be fussed about making some kind of witty comment or reply. Before anyone could stop her, she slipped the sling off her arm. 

Immediately, Steve had her elbow braced in his gentle grip. “Toni!” he admonished, sounding worried enough that she managed an inkling of remorse among her impatience. “You have to leave that on, Bruce said that pulling the stitches would cause you unnecessary pain, not to mention set back your recovery if they pop. You said that you…”

“I said I’d take proper care of myself,” Toni interrupted calmly, using her good arm to tug at the jacket Steve was wearing. Obligingly, he started to slip out of it, and the inventor spared a moment to concede how much she loved him. “And I will. But I’m not going to let Peter’s first look at me scare him to death.” Pulling away from Steve with a badly concealed grimace, she started to struggle into the jacket. 

Comprehension dawned on her lover’s face, but indecision made him torn. “What happens when he launches himself at you, and he hurts you by mistake?” he demanded, even as he carefully draped the jacket over her and tried to maneuver the sleeves. “Wouldn’t that traumatize him even more?”

“He’s not going to see me come back after leaving him alone for the first time, looking like road kill,” Toni stated firmly, an edge to her voice that promised a vicious and enduring argument if anyone dared to get in her way. 

She didn’t think it needed to be said that, if she got more injured, Peter would never know it. Toni Stark knew pain, and she was a recognized expert at hiding it. 

Maybe Steve recognized the futility in arguing with her, or more likely (given his penchant to argue with her anyway, when he believed himself right) his fatherly instinct to protect Peter from fear and trauma overrode his own fear and trauma at the thought of Toni being in pain, but for whatever reason, her lover nodded once in resignation. He touched warm lips against the cusp of her shoulder, a tender admission of understanding, and Toni felt the tension unravel inside her until she breathed easy again. She did so hate making Steve worry, but Peter had been through enough in his short six years. He did not need to foster the fear that he would lose any more people he loved and counted on. 

She loved their surrogate family for staying immobile as she and Steve made their way slowly forward; for sensing, correctly, that she needed a moment with her son, a moment she only wanted shared by Steve. 

By the time they got to Peter’s room, Toni’s arm and ribs were in agony and she knew her face had dipped to ashen somewhere along the way. The tenacity, grit and determination of a Stark was a potent thing, however, and she showed no signs of reneging on her convictions; instead, Toni just forced herself to stop leaning on Steve. That would be as damning as removing the jacket to display her variety of bruises, cuts, bandages and sutures. 

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Steve murmured almost inaudibly, misery darkening his eyes to cobalt as he took in her tight, pale features. 

“I have you,” Toni breathed back, lips lifting in a wan smile despite the pain. “If I’m not okay, I’ll reach out my hand, you’ll take it, and everything will be okay.”

Toni wasn’t under the impression that she’d said anything important or particularly earth-shattering, but for whatever reason, the words appeared to loosen something in her lover. Dimly, she wondered whether it was the intimacy of her trusting Steve to have her back, or perhaps just the conviction that everything was going to be okay, but regardless, the genius was pleased for it. 

Her son wasn’t the only one who needed to be reassured. 

The son in question, curled up on the window seat that Toni usually claimed to sing him to sleep, didn’t even look up from where he’d buried his head in his arms, as the door swung softly open. A soft sniffle and the small shudder that rocked his frame told Toni all she needed to know, and she was pretty sure that her heart was hurting worse than when she’d put in the arc. 

It was suddenly easy to put the pain to the very darkest recesses of her mind, and instead focus on crossing the room to Peter, who looked so wrenchingly small.

“Oh, _bambino,_ ” she murmured without conscious thought, lowering herself on to the window seat across from him and reaching a hand out towards her son.

At the sound of her voice, Peter’s head snapped up with enough force that Toni’s neck ached sympathetically. Heartbreakingly hopeful eyes blinked up at her, as though testing to see that she was really there, and a small sound burst out of him when he realized that she was. 

“Mommy!” Peter scrambled across the small expanse and, as predicted, threw himself into her arms. Pain erupted like a volcano but it was still a far second to the blinding joy and crippling relief that came from having the little boy in her arms. Holding him close. This was what made her feel like she was at home, and she would’ve broken every bone in her body twice if it meant getting back here. To Steve and Peter, and the Avengers and their home. 

Toni knew that she was rocking Peter, rocking them both, back and forth as she ran hands over Peter’s hair and face, as if to make sure that he was okay, as if he’d been the one in danger. She knew that a soft stream of Italian was slipping from her tongue that neither of her boys would have a hope of understanding; a sign of agitation that had rarely surfaced since she’d mastered self-control. She even knew that Steve was a solid presence next to her, occasionally running his hand down Peter’s back and keeping an arm wrapped around her despite the awkward position. What she didn’t know was that she was crying; tears flowing like rivulets down her cheek; until Steve’s achingly gentle fingers brushed them away, drawing her attention to it. 

Shooting her gaze up to him, she saw that his eyes were glittering suspiciously as well, but above all, there was that depth of understanding that Steve had always had. 

Gratitude and overwhelming love threatened to rob her of any semblance of composure that she was desperately clinging on to. Before it could strike, Peter hiccupped, the words falling from his mouth still muffled as he refused to lift his face from her neck, but changing from the constant stream of ‘Mommy’, which had been the only word forthcoming from the little boy. 

“You came back, you came home,” he babbled through tears, almost incoherently, and if anything was clear it was that their best attempts to protect him from this incident had failed abysmally. Peter spoke in stops and starts, breaths hitching uncontrollably with his tears. “I thought you were gonna be gone _forever,_ I thought you went away, _too_ , I was _scared_ that you were gonna _leave me_ …”

In times like this, it became all too clear just how much Peter remembered about the loss of his family. Although he’d come such a far way in recovering from that horrific experience, and although he had been young enough not to understand most of it, there was still the irrevocable end result; loss. A baby or not, Peter had always been aware that he’d lost something that day. To have latched onto Toni as he did, and to lose that again, could cause such damage to an already fragile heart, and obviously, Peter had cottoned on to the real possibility of it in the past two days. 

Toni hushed him softly, pulling him closer and running her fingers through his hair as she continued to rock him. “No, _bambino_ , I’m right here,” she comforted softly, pressing kisses to his cheek and the top of his head at random intervals. “Of course I came home, I promised you, didn’t I? How could I leave my sweet pea?” She kept up the steady stream of reassurances, not having the heart to address the very real chance that one day, she might not make it back home. The very real chance that she would put herself in the line of fire for the greater good of a world that she wanted her son to feel safe in.

She didn’t think Peter, or Steve for that matter, would react well to that discussion. 

For his part, Steve was awkwardly perched on what was left of the window seat now, stretching his arms around them so as to encompass both Toni and Peter in his embrace. It was probably for the benefit of their son, cocooned between them all warm and safe, but it worked wonders on Toni as well; gave her a sense of sturdiness, a foundation and a pillar of strength to lean on, and unknowingly, even soothed her own inner turmoil about the uncertainty of the future. Because whatever happened to her, if anything should come to pass, she knew that Steve would be there for Peter, and Peter for him. She would fight tooth and nail not to let it come to that, but there was a certain comfort in knowing that they would be there for one another, because they were the most important things in her world.

They stayed like that for long minutes until Peter tuckered himself out, drowsy and on the brink of sleep against her. When his eyelids finally slipped shut, Toni began the slow process of extricating herself from Steve’s arms and standing without dislodging her son, or for that matter, jostling her arm or ribs. 

Peter stirred briefly when she laid him on the bed; instinctively, Toni lowered herself on to the bed as well, and a gentle kiss to the forehead combined with the soft Italian lullaby that she remembered her mother singing to her many years ago was enough to soothe him back into sleep.

Toni had no more than straightened before Steve was there, and instead of helping her up, he simply hooked an arm underneath her knees, and another around her shoulders, and lifted her gently into a bridal carry. Normally, Toni would’ve protested everything about the action – very loudly and vehemently at that – but tonight, sensing as she did that Steve needed it as much as she might have, the genius only looped her arms around his neck and laid her head against his shoulder. 

Here was some of that storm of relief.

By the time they reached their room, small trembles were rocking through Steve’s body. Going on instinct again, as she seemed to do a lot, Toni pressed her lips to the top of her lover’s jaw.

“I’m alright, Stevie,” she murmured, as soft and gentle as the reassurances she’d offered Peter. “I’m right here, I’m okay. You got me out of there and I’m safe, now.”

It was the only thing that Steve needed to hear, apparently, because in the next moment, he was laying her on the bed and following her down, wrapping himself around her as if he could protect her from the entire world as long as his body stood between her and danger. For all that he covered practically every inch of her, he was unfalteringly careful, never once putting any pressure on one of her injuries. 

He peppered kisses over her face until Toni was sure that he hadn’t missed a single spot, before fusing their lips together and kissing her deeply. “You’re safe,” he repeated roughly, the words rubbing his lips over hers again, seeing as he refused to move any further. “You’re home. I got you. I got you.” 

This time, when he kissed her, it was hard and almost punishing; it was a mark of dominance and possession, but also the sign of a spectacular crashing of emotions as Steve let all of his pent-up feelings and fears pour out of him like water out of a fallen dam wall. Toni responded with as much fervor as she could manage, her own emotions meeting his like cracks of lightning, until a whimper of pain escaped her from trying to hitch a leg around Steve’s waist. The sound had her lover pulling back instantly, much to Toni’s disgruntlement. Both of them breathing heavily, Steve rested his forehead against hers, regaining composure without forfeiting their closeness. 

“When you’re healed,” he promised, the barest hint of a growl in his voice that promised their brand of homecoming would be postponed, but not forgone. Toni shivered at the huskiness in Steve’s voice and marveled slightly at how the supersoldier managed to light such a deep-reaching, craving need inside her with nothing more than a few words and those lust-darkened blue eyes. 

Toni nodded, albeit reluctantly. “I’m pretty sure you promised me 36 hours,” she reminded him with a smirk, trying not to lament what could have been. And she didn’t just mean the I-missed-you-so-much-sex. Transferring her hand to his face without taking her forehead off his, the genius caressed Steve’s cheek. “This might not mean much,” she prefaced with a faint note of warning in her whispered voice, “but there wasn’t a single second that I didn’t think you would find me.”

Steve didn’t seem to need any clarification on her words, as his eyes slipped closed and another shuddering breath coursed through his body. Maybe it had meant more than she’d realized, because inexplicably, his muscles relaxed as tension started to ebb away. 

“I wouldn’t have stopped until I did,” he confirmed lowly, and maybe Toni also hadn’t realized just how much she’d treasure the promise, because warmth almost bowled her over with it. “But please… please try not to scare me like that again,” he entreated, so openly vulnerable that Toni felt as if he’d reached into her chest and squeezed her heart in his fist. “I know you can’t promise me anything,” he added, before she could figure out how to meet his words, “but please just tell me that you’ll always fight back. I need you to always fight back.”

_Fight to get home. Fight to stay with me. Fight to survive._

He didn’t need to say the words for Toni to hear them. 

She touched her lips to his once; twice. “I’d fight the whole universe for you,” she promised quietly, and it rang with raw truth. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get back to you, to Peter. To come back home.”

Most of that awful tension had dissipated from Steve, but Toni knew it would be several days until the last of it was eradicated. It would be several days, possibly even weeks, until they could both put the terror and dread and shakiness behind them. 

She was going to wake Steve up with nightmares about small, closed spaces, and being pelted with rubble, and being assaulted with the endless cries and pleas from Peter and Steve and the rest of their family. 

Steve was going to wake her up with nightmares about Toni’s screams for help without being able to reach her, and finding her dead body, and coming back to their home bearing the news that she was gone and never coming back. 

But after a while, the memories would fade to something fuzzy and the jagged edges of the fear would smooth out. They’d fall asleep every night curled around each other and gradually, the nightmares would be warded off by the sheer force of their combined presence. Steve would unthinkingly go on a morning run when Toni had an early meeting that Pepper would force her to attend, and they’d remember that it was okay to continue with the mundanity of their day-to-day without worry and fear. The first few fights or missions as Avengers would be a little more difficult to get through, but they’d do that too, because they were co-leaders of the Earth’s mightiest heroes and that demanded a level of trust that transcended everything else. 

They would heal. And they would move on. 

But for right then, Toni and Steve held on to each other with the desperation of lovers; they slept restlessly, constantly awaking to reassure each other that things were alright and that they were together and safe and nothing could touch them, here. 

And when, at some point during the night, Peter found his way to cuddle up on Toni’s other side, so that she was sandwiched between them, that comfort was only reaffirmed. 

By the time she awoke the next morning, Clint and Nat draped over her legs, Bruce on Peter’s other side with his hand resting innocuously on her forearm, Bucky sprawled over Steve with his head resting against Toni’s hip, and Thor along the foot of the bed with her feet tucked underneath his stomach…

…well, Toni couldn’t have felt safer.

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope it was everything you guys hoped for! 
> 
> There will be more incoming in this 'verse (next up is a prompted fic for FrozenFlame) so stay tuned if you'd like to see more of them! 
> 
> To everyone who stuck around this long, thank you so much. Your support means everything!
> 
> Cheers,  
> J <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit of a different approach this time, I'm going to post this one in stages, mostly because I was too impatient to write more before posting! XD 
> 
> Don't worry, I promise more Avenger interaction is forthcoming (Bucky and Rhodey included) and there will be flashbacks galore for fluffy moments! 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed! 
> 
> J <3


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